Immigration and employment law

Massachusetts Municipal Human Resources’ annual spring program webinar on March 13 covered recent updates in immigration and employment law.

Attorney Prasant Desai of Iandoli, Desai & Cronin discussed the history of the employment verification system and gave an overview of the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification process, including proper completion of the I-9 form, records retention, and audits.

Desai said the most common mistakes employees make on I-9 forms are forgetting to check off their citizenship/immigration status or to sign and date the form.

“That’s critical,” he said. “Employers need to make sure that the employee does their job, and … review their work.”

Attorney Ryan Jaziri of Morgan, Brown & Joy gave updates on recent changes in Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement priorities under the Trump administration, particularly with regard to gender and national origin.

“It remains to be seen at this point how these changes trickle down into the various EEOC field offices and the individual EEOC investigators that are assigned to cases,” said Jaziri, adding that “these priority shifts and clear objectives are not just statements in a vacuum, and they are likely to have practical consequences.”

The webinar concluded with a Q&A session facilitated by Caitlyn Julius, assistant human resources director in Springfield, with questions addressing advice to municipalities that are conducting I-9 audits, I-9 records retention, and e-Verify.

• Employment Eligibility Verification and EEOC Update (845K PDF)