Cincinnati lawmaker wants all ‘ illegal aliens’ kept out of program

A House Republican proposal to block undocumented workers who get hurt on the job from accessing workers’ compensation benefits sparked a passionate Ohio House debate.

“What I hope is illegal aliens will get the message we don’t want to have them in our workforce sucking on our workers’ comp system,” said Rep. Bill Seitz.

The Cincinnati Republican said the House just wants the bureau to verify an injured worker’s legal status, the same as is required for unemployment compensation or food stamps.

But Rep. Dan Ramos called it a “dangerous, illogical provision.” The proposal, included in the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation budget, would punish injured workers and actually encourage the hiring of undocumented workers by shielding employers from liability for an injury, the Lorain Democrat said.

“Why would we want to actively make it cheaper and easier to hire undocumented workers and then actively make it easier for those people to have unsafe working conditions?” said Ramos, Ohio's longest-serving Latino state officeholder.

“If an unscrupulous employer wants to hire undocumented people, which they shouldn’t do, the state of Ohio is telling them through this bill, 'we’re going to assume you did nothing wrong. And if your undocumented worker hurts themselves, that’s their fault.'”

Despite Democratic objections, the provision remained in the budget bill that passed the House, 65-29. But its future appears murky in the Senate, where President Larry Obhof, R-Medina, said he hasn’t studied it, but he didn’t sound like a fan.

“That’s a proposal that’s been around for a number of years and, as far as I’m aware, it’s never passed the Senate,” he said.

Seitz, citing statistics from State Legislatures Magazine, said 8 million undocumented immigrants were in the workforce in 2014, especially in construction and farming.

“Those are two of the occupations that have a relatively high claims experience under the workers’ comp system,” Seitz said. “Every dollar paid in compensation to people here illegally is a dollar that legitimate employers have to pay into the BWC system to pay those benefits, or a dollar that is unavailable for legitimate, hard-working, legal aliens and legal workers.”

Seitz noted that an undocumented worker could still sue the employer for medical costs and recovery if he or she could prove that the employer knew the worker was not legal.

“Will there be such lawsuits or not? I don’t know,” Seitz said.

The idea that undocumented immigrants are going to utilize the court system to prove that they didn’t deceive their employer about their illegal status is a fantasy, Democrats have argued.

“That’s difficult to do from a detention center, very difficult to do from another country,” Ramos said.

Workers’ compensation is an insurance program, which is a different question from whether someone is documented or not, Obhof said.

“The more important question is, if you have employers who are knowingly employing undocumented workers, shouldn’t there be consequences there, too?” Obhof said. “What’s the problem we’re trying to solve here?”

When that question was relayed to Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, R-Clarksville, he responded, “We don’t supply these kind of benefits to folks that are undocumented aliens in the state.”

Rejecting the change means having businesses pay excess premiums “to cover people who shouldn’t be here in the first place,” Seitz said.