Regarding Job Discrimination & Your EAD

I have been researching this issue since people started bringing their stories to the forum about how they're being told flat-out by employers or hiring managers that the company cannot and will not hire applicants with EADs.

Reading the instructions on the actual I-9 form, we find that employers must not:

1)Demand that an employee show specific documents
2)Ask to see employment authorization documents before an individual accepts a job offer
3)Refuse to accept a document, or refuse to hire an individual, because a document will expire in the future
4)Refuse to accept a receipt that is acceptable for Form I-9 purposes
-Demand a specific document when reverifying that an employee is authorized to work

Most relevant to us as DACA recipients is number 3 above, bolded.

Digging further, however, there is the following:


Why the however above? Notice above who is protected by this law: US citizens, permanent residents, asylees, and refugees.

It turns out that the full ruling regarding citizenship or immigration status discrimination states that it does not apply to non-immigrant aliens.

That would be us, DACA recipients with our EADs.

What's more, this affects those workers with professional visas, like H1, also considered non-immigrant aliens. Digging around the internet, there are various accounts of people with non-immigrant visas claiming discrimination because they have EADs — the same situation we're facing right now.

What does this mean? It is discrimination, no argument about that. The thing is the employer is allowed to do it.

We are protected against other types of discrimination, though. We can't be discriminated against our national origin, for instance:


So if a company hires an EAD-authorized person from a different country, but denies you employment because you have an EAD and you're from a different country, you can file a claim of discrimination in this case.

We're also protected against document abuse (an employer can't specify what documents you must show, and he can't single you out alone to re-verify your documents), and retaliation (if you bring up possible discrimination, and taking action against it).

This is straight from the USCIS website, on the section titled I-9 Central, which I suggest everyone read thoroughly and become familiar with the rules.

There are more subtleties to this, of course, so if you believe you've been subject to any type of discrimination, it's wise to consult with a lawyer or to contact the appropriate government agencies.

The best thing is to keep looking if you're turned down because of your EAD, and to try to educate those in charge of hiring that our EADs won't require sponsorship, and that they're renewable. Even then, though, companies reserve the right to hire workers with permanent work authorization.

In the end, don't fret, my friends. There are opportunities out there so don't give up. Just think where we were before DACA: could we even have gotten a job at McDonald's flipping burgers or at a K-Mart mopping floors? Not legally, at least. So keep that in mind, and stay positive.



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For further reading:
-USCIS - I-9 Central
-The full text of the employment discrimination law which specifies what types of aliens are protected.
-A few threads from previous years of H1 workers discussing EAD discrimination: 1, 2
-Website that supports this:

Can employers discriminate against employees requiring visa sponsorship?

Non-immigrant aliens, whether work authorized or not, aliens not in legal status in the U.S. and others requiring visa sponsorship are not protected by the anti-discrimination provisions in IRCA. [...]

this.

Thank you for a great thread. This will happened a lot in higher position, engineer, programers, medical fields, because employers want people stable who can be at their job at any time. No chance of their employees not being able to work because of their limit. Lower competitive jobs should have no problem with it.

Hey this is very helpful maybe someone oughtta' sticky this, just my opinion!

Some additional, important information:

After doing more research, some companies adopted policies against the hiring of EAD-authorized individuals because, in the past, they had to deal with hiring non-immigrant alien workers who then were unable to renew their work authorizations, and subsequently had to leave the country — and their jobs, of course. Thus, the company loses money by losing a worker it spent time and resources training and giving experience to.

I came to the conclusion that when a company tells you "Sorry, we don't sponsor," they're really telling you "We prefer not to hire workers with work authorizations that may potentially not be renewed in the future; thank you." In other words, EADs and non-immigrant statuses are viewed as unstable, uncertain, and unreliable employment authorizations.

For this reason, some major companies have adopted the policy of sponsoring any non-immigrant aliens they do hire. So one of these companies, after all, may hire a worker with an EAD, but the company will immediately begin the sponsorship process. This way, they make sure they won't lose this worker unexpectedly. The spaces for these sponsored workers, however, are few and far between. The sponsorship process is expensive and risky for the company so they limit the number of employees who go through this.

Everyone else gets the standard replies: "Our company is not sponsoring at the moment" or "Get back to us when you get your green card."

Hey guys! So I took the liberty, and I hope Dark Apotheosis doesn't mind, to contact the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) regarding this issue to confirm basically what Dark Apotheosis found. So I'm sharing his response to this issue:
It's a sad confirmation of the info Dark Apotheosis gave us, but at least we are informed and now know that we have yet one more reason to fight for fair and comprehensive immigration reform.

Hope this info helps someone out there and ease some questions you might have had.

Its really just business they don't want liabilities extra to deal with

Fuck 'em. /ThreadClosed

Great thread!

Powerful stuff. Good job.