Mar 19, 2012
South Carolina ag workers exempt from employer immigration checks

A loophole in the S.C. immigration law exempts farmworkers and private maids and nannies from a mandatory immigration status check.
The law, which went into effect Jan. 1, requires all private employers in South Carolina to use the federal E-Verify database to check newly hired employees’ immigration status. However, a little-known loophole provides exceptions for four categories of workers — agriculture laborers, domestic workers in a private residence, ministers and fisherman working on crews of 10 or fewer people.
The agriculture industry and the legislators who supported the exemption said it was necessary because migrant farmworkers would be difficult to check, and no one wanted South Carolina to encounter a shortage of workers to pick peaches, strawberries and watermelons, as Georgia and Alabama recently did. MBO