California has many protections for immigrant workers, making it unlawful to engage in “unfair immigration-related practices” against workers who exercise their rights under the Labor Code, such as complaining about minimum wage violations.1 For more information, see Immigrant Workers and Discrimination/Retaliation Protection. Immigrant workers are also protected against national origin discrimination under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). For more information, see National Origin Discrimination.2

• All California workers — regardless of whether they’re authorized to work in the United States — are protected by state laws regulating wages and working conditions.

Practical Considerations

Consider these tips from the USCIS on avoiding discrimination in the I-9 process. These tips can be found in the USCIS Handbook for Employers, Guidance for Completing the Form I-9 (M-274).

Do:

• Treat employees equally when recruiting and hiring and when verifying employment authorization and identity during the Form I-9 process.
• Allow all employees to choose the documents they’ll present from the list of acceptable Form I-9 documents.

Don’t:

• Set different employment eligibility verification standards or require that different documents be presented by employees because of their national origin and citizenship status. For example, you can't demand that non-U.S. citizens present DHS-issued documents.
• Request to see employment eligibility verification documents before hiring and completing a Form I-9 because someone looks or sounds “foreign” or because someone expresses not being a U.S. citizen.
• Refuse to accept a document or refuse to hire an individual because a document has a future expiration date.
• Request that, during reverification, an employee present a new unexpired Employment Authorization Document (Form I-766) if that individual presented one during initial verification. For reverification, each employee must be free to present any document either from List A or from List C.
• Limit jobs to U.S. citizens unless U.S. citizenship is required for the specific position by law; regulation; executive order; or federal, state or local government contract.

1. Lab. Code sec. 1019