U.S. Warns State to Probe Job Bias Charges

Months after officials in Sacramento pledged to repair a system that has fallen into disrepair, the state is still failing to properly handle and refer charges of workplace discrimination by legal immigrants, according to federal officials.

The slow response prompted a recent letter from the U.S. Justice Department urging California officials to “make a priority of correcting this situation so that discrimination victims have the protections of both state and federal law.”

The issue is critical for perhaps hundreds of thousands of legal immigrant workers in California who, experts said, are routinely denied jobs or illegally badgered for excessive work papers simply because they look or sound foreign.

State and federal officials have all but ignored a partnership created a decade ago to investigate such charges. The arrangement called for state officials to refer complaints to the U.S. Justice Department for review. After inquiries from The Times on the issue in August, officials in Washington and Sacramento vowed to fix the problem immediately.

But an Oct. 13 letter from the U.S. Justice Department to California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing reveals that the state has not yet lived up to its commitment.

State fair employment officials did not return repeated phone calls Monday seeking comment.

With the White House monitoring the issue, officials from the U.S. Justice Department sat down with California fair employment officials in September to try to work out a new system. But even after that meeting, federal officials questioned why the state was not handling discrimination complaints properly under the terms of the 1989 agreement.

“We continue to be concerned that your agency is not sending discrimination complaints directly to [the Justice Department] or to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for eventual referral for our action,” wrote John Trasvina, the Justice Department’s special counsel for immigrant discrimination.

Moreover, Trasvina said, he wants to know whether older cases that the state failed to refer to the federal government “were ever acted upon by your agency.”

In the last fiscal year, Trasvina said, California’s fair employment department received 114 charges that small business employers had discriminated against workers because of their national origin--charges that should have gone to the Justice Department for possible enforcement.

“We did not receive any [of the charges] from your agency,” he wrote.

Clinton administration officials have blamed the Republican administration of former Gov. Pete Wilson for allowing California’s role in the process to deteriorate. Aides to Wilson vigorously deny such charges, but Trasvina revived the charge in his letter, saying: “I realize most of the inattention to these cases occurred during your predecessor’s tenure and that you are taking many steps to restore your agency’s preeminence in the civil rights area in your state.

“Latino, Asian American and other immigrants are the largest and fastest-growing segments of the population, both statewide and nationally, and it is our fervent hope that you can make a priority of correcting this situation so that discrimination victims have the protections of both state and federal law,” Trasvina wrote.

Suzanne Ambrose, chief counsel for California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said last month that “certainly at a minimum,” state officials want to find a way to coordinate and share information with federal officials on immigration charges.

But Trasvina said in an interview that the Justice Department has yet to hear from state officials on resolving the problem. When it does, the Justice Department wants to send staff members to California to train state personnel on identifying and handling discrimination charges.

“When I’d like to get this resolved is yesterday. But realistically . . . it’s not something we can wave a wand at and say the problem is solved,” he said.

Previous studies found that as many as one in five employers discriminated illegally based on citizenship status or foreign characteristics, with an acute problem in Los Angeles.

Justice Department officials have mounted a recent push to inform legal immigrants about their rights in the workplace. But the number of cases that the department has handled--and the amount it has collected in fines--have dwindled in recent years. Some observers blame the lack of interaction between federal and state civil rights officials in California, as federal officials have come to rely more on private immigration groups to field complaints of abuse.

Charles Wheeler, senior attorney at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network in San Francisco, said Monday that he was troubled to learn the state is still not sending immigration charges to the Justice Department for review. “It doesn’t take much skill or knowledge to make a determination [of possible discrimination] and forward that to the right agency,” he said.

But one Clinton administration official who is familiar with the immigration issue said that the slow progress simply reflects the frustrating pace of government reform.

“Large federal and state agencies aren’t exactly nimble,” the official said. “They turn at about the speed of aircraft carriers, so it takes occasional prodding to get anyone to do anything.”