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Courts in recent years have upheld the workers' compensation rights of injured immigrant employees, regardless of legal status. Only one state — Wyoming — excludes illegal immigrants from the workers' compensation system. Ohio may become the second.
In November, the Columbus Dispatch said Ohio state Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, planned to introduce a bill requiring workers to document their legal status before receiving compensation under the state's main workers' compensation insurance program. He has yet to introduce the bill, but the issue may be addressed during a comprehensive Senate review of the state's workers' compensation system.
The Competitive Workers' Compensation Task Force met for the first time Feb. 17. At the top of the agenda is a study of new private workers' compensation insurance options. In a guest column, state Sen. Karen Gillmor, R-Tiffin, said Ohio is one of only two U.S. states with no private workers' compensation option. She said a state monopoly raises costs for businesses.
"When I talk with business owners and CEOs at companies across the state, they consistently say that the cost of workers' compensation premiums in Ohio is one of the biggest barriers to their ability to invest, expand and create jobs," Gillmor said. "For many other businesses struggling in the down economy, workers' compensation rates are threatening their survival."
The task force may also discuss excluding illegal immigrants from coverage, which Seitz believes would lower insurance costs for businesses. David Leopold, president-elect of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the Dispatch that Seitz had no evidence to suggest the new rule would lower business costs in the state.
"It's senseless because it's not going to address the problem," Leopold said. "If he has no statistics to back this up, he hasn't shown a problem exists."
Jon Coppelman of the workers' compensation consulting firm Lynch Ryan agrees with Leopold. He added that the proposal is cruel and could increase the number of illegal immigrants in Ohio.
"It's an invitation to employers to actively recruit illegal workers: they won't be held responsible for hiring them, they won't have any responsibility for workplace injuries that occur and they can avoid other forms of liability, provided, of course, that they did not 'intentionally hurt' the worker," Coppelman wrote on his company's blog. "Seitz has stacked the deck against an already vulnerable population."
Wyoming is the only state that specifically withholds workers' compensation payments from illegal immigrants.
Courts in Ohio and other states have ruled on the side of immigrant workers in recent years. In 2004, an Ohio appellate court decided a Lebanese citizen deserved compensation for a job-related injury. A Nebraska Court of Appeals held in December 2009 that an illegal immigrant was entitled to state compensation for an injury at his meatpacking job.
