Help!!! employee working with fake papers.

jbanda

I have a very unique case, one of my good, long time employee confess that all this time he has been working using somebody else's work permit, he confess because he just received his own work authorization and SS#, if possible I would like to keep him, can I change his name and SS# to reflect his real name now that his status in legal? I definetely want to do the right and legal thing, any advice will be aprreciated. Thanks

Gillian

This person is legal now, correct? That is what I would go with. You might want to check with an attorney but there might be some liability to dismissing the person. You say "long term". Was the person hired prior to November 6, 1986. That was the date that the Immigration Control and Reform Act was effective and an employer can "grandfather" anyone who was unauthorized prior to that date. If so, the person was legally employed then and also now. The only reason that one might use to dismiss the person is falsification of their application. Personally, that isn't enough for me.

slewis

I had this happen very often where I used to work and being the employee is legal now and you want to keep him/her. First thing to find out is if the Social Security number he/she gave you first was even valid, call SSA and verify. If not, then the best thing to do is ask the employee, most of them go through lawyers to get their status updated when they enter the US illegally, and depending on how they got their status changed whether it be through a sponsorship or another way the lawyer will either have the employee leave all the old earnings under the old SSN and you will issue a W2 for that and his/her new earnings under the new SSN and you will issue a W2 for that. Sometimes when they get status changed they have to pay taxes and penalties on the money they earned when they were working here illegally, now the lawyer may say ok well the SSN he/she was using is actually his brother who is legal, you will probably have to amend his W2 to reflect the full year earnings to his new SSN. Like I said the best thing to do is ask the employee and they are usually more than willing to share information with you when you are trying to help them. If he is not sure ask how he got his immigration papers and if you can contact that lawyer or agent he/she worked with. If you approach the employee as you are trying to help you just don't know which direction to go the employee will probably be very grateful and give you the whole story. Good Luck, if you have any other questions, please feel free to email me directly at [email]slewis@pmds.com[/email] like I said I dealt with all kinds of immigration issues for over 3 years working at the produce market.