Good News: Obama’s Unconstitutional Amnesty Incentivizes Employers to Game ObamaCare by Employing Illegals
Under the president’s new amnesty, businesses will have a $3,000-per-employee incentive to hire illegal immigrants over native-born workers because of a quirk of Obamacare.
President Obama’s temporary amnesty, which lasts three years, declares up to 5 million illegal immigrants to be lawfully in the country and eligible for work permits, but it still deems them ineligible for public benefits such as buying insurance on Obamacare’s health exchanges.
Under the Affordable Care Act, that means businesses who hire them won’t have to pay a penalty for not providing them health coverage — making them $3,000 more attractive than a similar native-born worker, whom the business by law would have to cover.
But the story gained legs today, as Jeh Johnson was grilled about it in Congress:
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in congressional testimony today that the Affordable Care Act–also known as Obamacare–will not apply to illegal aliens who are allowed to stay and work in the United States as a result of President Obama’s executive action.
“Mr. Secretary, is it true that the illegal immigrants who are granted amnesty will not need to comply with the Affordable Care Act?” Rep. Lou Barlett (R-Pa.) asked Johnson at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on President Barack Obama’s executive action on immigration.
“Those who are candidates for and are accepted into the Deferred Action Program will not be eligible for comprehensive health care, ACA,” Johnson responded.
Barletta then asked: “So therefore, an employer may have a decision to make: Do I keep the American worker and provide health insurance or pay a $3,000 fine or do I get rid of the American worker and hire someone who I do not have to provide health insurance, and I won’t get fined. Is that a possibility?”
“I don’t see it that way,” Johnson said.
“You don’t think any employers will see it that way?” Barletta asked.
“I don’t think I see it that way. No. No, sir,” Johnson said.
Even the lefty hacks at PolitiFact can’t deny it — they just have Tim Jost and other lefties who are in Obama’s pocket, claiming that it is Very Unlikely that businesses would take this step, simply because it might save them thousands of dollars:
Although this might save some money, it could cause problems for the business, said Timothy Jost, a health law professor at Washington and Lee University. Offering benefits comes with its own tax advantages, and it helps businesses attract talent and reduce absenteeism due to health issues.
Perhaps more restricting is the fact that these businesses could only employ illegal immigrants — no citizens — for this to work. That’s because the business is subject to a fine if even only one employee gets a subsidy.
In that case, the company would have to pay the employer mandate fine: $3,000 multiplied by the number of employees. (The tally would include all workers, even illegal immigrants.)
“The trigger for the employer mandate is that at least one of their full-time workers obtains a marketplace subsidy — so the only way an employer could be sure would be to only hire permitted illegal immigrants,” said Margaret Riley, a health law professor at the University of Virginia. “That seems pretty unlikely.”
The employer mandate is unpopular among many, not just conservatives, so arguing that the employer mandate incentivizes hiring illegal immigrants over citizens is effective politically, Riley said. But it would be too risky for a business to take these steps and “pull off such a stunt.”
“It is offered more as another argument against the employer mandate than as something that employers might actually try,” she said.
Each illegal employed is one less employee who might run off and get a subsidy that would slam the business with a fine. The more illegals you employ, the less your risk of the fine. The assertion that “businesses could only employ illegal immigrants — no citizens — for this to work” (that “only” is misplaced, editors; did you never learn proper English?) is completely wrong.
But since when was factual incorrectness an obstacle to lefty assertions in Big Media?
Ding.
Patterico (9c670f) — 12/2/2014 @ 9:07 pmAhem, you are assuming those illegals will not go after the subsidies. I think it more likely that they would try for it. If they ignored the restrictions on getting here, why would they be bothered by a restriction totally bureaucratic in nature?
kishnevi (3719b7) — 12/2/2014 @ 9:30 pmi’m befuddled by Riley’s argument. The situation as it is sets up seems perfect for hiring illegals , especially if in a position like landscaping where the employer wouldn’t intend on having each hire last more than a year anyway. Even for a longer term situation, why wouldn’t an employer who is in the market for employees that have illegals in the mix take the $3000 as a major incentive.
seeRpea (2a32aa) — 12/2/2014 @ 9:45 pmWell, yes of course. And there are some that would put them outside the Social Security and Medicare system, too.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 12/2/2014 @ 10:05 pmThe answer to this is they MUST have Obamacare, but they CANNOT have any subsidies. I dare you to find someone who wants that for themselves.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 12/2/2014 @ 10:06 pmThis is going to pose a problem for every car wash in Southern California.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 12/2/2014 @ 10:08 pmFWIW, I’ve observed through the years at least one or two very liberal employers/executives or managers who’ve played every trick in the book to reduce their business’s tax burdens and nuisances caused by government mandates. Quite a sight to behold and also totally astonishing because those people nonetheless always vote for the types of politicians who trigger such unethical, sleight-of-hand in the first place. That’s another reason why I really believe that liberalism is, as the smirk goes, a form of mental illness.
Mark (c160ec) — 12/2/2014 @ 10:25 pmMy favorite part is where some academics — who are only familiar with the private sector in the same way that a male is familiar with giving birth — confidently tell us that no company would bother to hire only illegal immigrants, notwithstanding the savings on health care that could be realized. OK, if you say so Professor.
JVW (60ca93) — 12/2/2014 @ 11:44 pm“And there are some that would put them outside the Social Security and Medicare system, too.”
Kevin M – And there are some, if I understand it correctly, like Al Sharpton, who would withhold such payroll taxes from his employees, but not remit them to the government in order to maintain his lavish lifestyle.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 12/2/2014 @ 11:46 pmA lot of people do not know this, but you cannot legally refuse to hire an illegal, provided they attempt to submit some kind of documentation. The laws against employing illegals are unenforceable by design.
If you reject a prospective hire’s documents, the Civil Rights Office will provide them with a lawyer to sue you for discrimination, and you will be required to prove in court that you treated all documents the same way.
However, if you accept the documents, you are given immunity from prosecution. As the Department of Justice says, “you are neither required nor expected to be a document expert.”
So you accept a fake driver’s license and a fake SS card. You submit them for verification, and SSA says no such number, or it’s a different name. If you fire that employee, the Civil Rights Office will provide them with a lawyer to sue you for discrimination, and you will be required to prove in court that you treated all employees the same way.
However, if you give them the letter from SSA and ask them to resolve the discrepancy, you are given immunity from prosecution.
Even E-verify cannot be used to refuse to hire an illegal. You must first hire the illegal and then wait for a final determination of status–I have no idea how long this takes–until you can fire them.
The immigration laws we had before Obama were intentionally subverted. The system is deeply corrupt.
Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/3/2014 @ 12:41 amI will point out that none of the above is new, it has been the case for at least the last ten years.
Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/3/2014 @ 12:42 amI have no idea how many illegals are working for cash under the table, or were knowingly hired because they were illegal. But I do know that the vast majority of illegals are working using fake documents. You don’t even need very good fakes. You just need to turn in something, and it doesn’t even have to have the same name on the documents, since employers must be culturally sensitive and take into account that people from other countries might use different names from time to time.
I wish I was making this up.
So two things I commonly hear in discussions of immigration are not true:
1) We can curb illegal immigration by punishing employers. We cannot, because the laws are designed to facilitate the hiring of illegals. If an illegal gives an employer fake documents and the employer accepts them in good faith, the employer cannot be prosecuted.
2) Illegals are not paying Federal taxes. By and large they most likely are, as they were hired legally and are working under some identity and paying under some SSN, even a fake one. (Not that this excuses them for being here, they have no more right to live and work here than I have to live and work in Mexico or Canada.)
Gabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/3/2014 @ 12:52 amYou’re close, Gabriel.
You have to accept the documents the employee gives you from a list of acceptable types of documents. If they give you sufficient documentation, and they look legitimate you have to accept them. You don’t have to be a document expert, but if someone gives you an obvious forgery then you don’t need to accept it (you make copies of everything when you hire people, and you can only ask for those documents after you hire them). The documents, though, do have to have the same names. They have to establish identity as well as ability to lawfully work in this country.
And yes you do have to ask the employee to resolve the situation if you can not (it could be just a typo on your part) when you you get a red flag no-match letter from the SSA. It can be years before the SSA gets around to it; between 2007 and 2011 the SSA simply stopped sending them. And if the employee no longer works for you, you have to document your due diligence r.e. trying to locate the individual and take care of the problem, and keep those records for four years because you can be audited. If you can’t resolve the problem then you ask your employee to do it. You have to give them a reasonable amount of time to take care of the issue. But then you must fire them because at that point you are slipping over the line to knowingly employing illegal aliens which exposes you to a great deal of liability. So after a certain amount of time if they can not resolve the situation then you have to fire them them. Follow the same procedure with each employee, and give them the same amount of time to resolve the situation. Put in in writing by giving them a letter, with a copy for your files, and you and the employee sign both copies.
And just because they were hired legally doesn’t mean they are paying their taxes. Employers don’t keep after them about paying taxes. In fact, that’s one way illegals victimize people through identity theft. Because when they don’t pay their taxes then the IRS goes after the legitimate citizen who’s SSN is being used by the illegal. The IRS doesn’t care about identity theft. The IRS and the SSA know who the illegal is because normally it’s partial identity theft. They use their own name and someone else’s SSN (that’s why you get those no-match letters). All they care about is getting the money.
The feds know who the illegal is, and they will not tell the victim. They have official policies to aid and abet identity theft because they have official policies to facilitate illegal immigration. This might once have been difficult to believe, but after all the IRS wrongdoing exposed under this administration we all know the IRS is simply the enforcement arm of the Democratic party and its agenda.
It’s up to the American victim to prove to the IRS that they are not the individual who made the money and didn’t pay taxes on it. and if possible find out who is using their SSN. If the illegal has already filed a return under that SSN (many do to collect more in tax credits they don’t deserve than in taxes they pay) the IRS will not let the US citizen victim file a return using the same SSN until the victim resolves the situation. The IRS will not tell the victim that identity theft was the reason they didn’t let the individual file a return. And if the victim can’t file on time due to the identity theft, the IRS will still extract the late fees and penalties from the victim.
Repeat. The feds already know the name of the illegal. They will protect that individual’s identity. It’s only yours they won’t protect.
http://www.cis.org/IdentityTheft
But you’re right. You can’t stop illegal immigration by cracking down on the employers. The law is designed to facilitate illegal immigration. Even when the law doesn’t, the feds write policies that do. Employers don’t have sovereign immunity like LEOs do. They can be sued for discrimination by all sorts of activist groups if they try to hard to avoid hiring illegal aliens. One of those activist groups is the DoJ. Often when they talk about enforcing immigration law, they mean cracking down on “overzealous” employers who go beyond the bare minimum required of them by the immigration reform and control act of 1986. That act puts all kinds of handcuffs on employers forcing them to hire people they suspect of being here illegally.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-files-lawsuit-alleging-immigration-related-employment-discrimination
And the libs know that you can’t stop or slow illegal immigration by cracking down on employers. Which is why they keep vilifying employers who hire illegals. They know that their own liberal policies force those employers to hire illegal immigrants. And they get a big laugh when the suckers buy their act. Because people are stupid enough to get distracted by that squirrel.
It’s Grubers all the way down.
Steve57 (c4b0b3) — 12/3/2014 @ 1:54 amGabriel Hanna (dcffe4) — 12/3/2014 @ 12:52 am
I don’t know that anyone is seriously claiming that that this gets people out of the country. What happens here is that the claim is made taht the reason for restricting immigration is to prevent wages from dropping, when that is kind of made up after the fact, so they pass this. It does have the effect of preventing illegal immigrants from getting high paying jobs. And enforcement anyway is only aimed at big employers – here they pretend that the only jobs that exist are at big employers.
An employer can, of course be prosecuted, but he can’t be convicted for this. They ultimately did not try this even with Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin although they threw that in, in the federal case against him. A state prosecution for hiring underage workers resulted in an acquittal.
He was convicted of bank fraud, because his company had used already paid accounts receivable as collateral – meaning there was no collateral, and the rolled over debt eventually went unpaid. They were also delaying payments to farmers, and that was also a violation of an old law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sholom_Rubashkin
The company went bankrupt because they had to reduce production when they lost workers, but the company had really actually been losing money, but making it up on volume (it was constantly expanding and that hid the fact that it was losing money)
They had contemplated they might be forced to discharge some workers, and had even made plans – they and started a satellite plant on an Indian reservation. That closed, because as I speculate, they were probably actually losing money on their operations, when irregular expenses are factored in. I would say that their meat was probably priced too low for it to be a profitable company, but they didn’t understand that.
The whole raid and everything was probably instigated either by the union or its competitors., because it was moving into mainstream supermarkets.
This (paying taxes) has become more and more true, but not all work on the books.
(Not that this excuses them for being here, they have no more right to live and work here than I have to live and work in Mexico or Canada.)
Sammy Finkelman (be1929) — 12/3/2014 @ 3:07 amBoenher should be the first to hang. call 202=225-0600 If you rinos give a darn.
mg (31009b) — 12/3/2014 @ 3:13 amAnd Jebby says republicans can win without conservatives. Jebby and his ilk will never get me to vote for anyone but a conservative, hell I will vote for a pot smoking liberal before I ever cast a vote for another dope like bush,romney,ford,juanny mac, dole or any other progressive twit you people come up with. Republicans stink on ice.
Lock and Load losers.
Republicans are sluts.
mg (31009b) — 12/3/2014 @ 3:20 amI wish conservative Americans would riot.
mg (31009b) — 12/3/2014 @ 3:21 amThe incentive for hiring workers permitted to get jobs by Obama would be that any of those workers could be excluded from an insurance plan, if the insurance company agreed, without the company facing a penalty. They’d be just like part timers, even if full time.
Sammy Finkelman (c41e9f) — 12/3/2014 @ 7:54 am@Steve57: The documents, though, do have to have the same names.
Actually, they don’t, because people from some countries sharing a border with ours might use their mother’s surname or their father’s, for example, and it can be interpreted as national origin discrimination for an employer to reject on that basis. DOJ says that documents should be consistent, which would (you’d think) rule out different birthdates, but between saint’s days, the lunar and solar calendars it would not surprise me if they carved out an exemption there too.
It all comes down to implementation–which cases do they take to court? The process is the punishment. Hiring an illegal who presents documents carries no risk, and refusing to hire them does.
@Sammy Finkelman:I don’t know that anyone is seriously claiming that that this gets people out of the country.
I hear this a lot. If they can’t get jobs, they’ll self-deport, is how it’s usually phrased.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 12/3/2014 @ 10:08 amAt this link DOJ offers guidance to an employer who has a question about “driver privilege cards” which some states issue to people who can’t establish identity.
DOJ says it doesn’t matter as long as the ID shows name, DOB, height, eye color, and address–if it’s issued by a state, it’s valid for employment purposes, whether or not these are provided for illegals.
Gabriel Hanna (64d4e1) — 12/3/2014 @ 10:17 am