Legal News

If You Hire A Domestic in the U.K., Hang Tight to the Paperwork

By Jennifer Forsyth

Those who have ever hired domestic help from another country — maid service, nanny, groundskeeper, bowling ball polisher — might be intrigued by the plight of the Baroness Patricia Scotland, Britain’s attorney general. She was fined this week for hiring an illegal immigrant as her housekeeper.

The particulars are interesting: The immigrant was a 27-year-old Tongan woman who had lived in Britain illegally for five years after overstaying a student visa. Lady Scotland — love the name — said she hadn’t knowingly hired an illegal immigrant, but she was fined £5,000 nonetheless for not keeping the proper paperwork, according to this AP story.

Ah, but the law is all about the paperwork. According to this story in The Guardian, the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 requires someone who’s hiring a domestic to do the following:

• demand that person’s papers (passports, visas, etc.);
• examine them;
• take a view on their authenticity;
• photocopy them (including the cover of the passport);
• put the photocopies away in a secure, locked filing cabinet where no one can interfere with them;
• go through the same process every 12 months;
• and keep the papers for two years after the worker has left his or her job.

These requirements apply to anyone hired, not just someone from another country, so as to be fair.

You might think anyone who is organized enough to do all that wouldn’t need a maid. Of course, Lady Scotland should have known about all these requirements, because as Home Office minister, she helped draft this legislation aimed at tightening penalties for those who hire illegal immigrants. Her career is tanking because of this perceived hypocrisy, despite that fact that she has said she is “bitterly, bitterly” sorry.

But we here at the LB are more interested in the law itself. Will it help curb illegal immigration by harshly punishing those who hire people without the proper paperwork? Or will presumably otherwise law-abiding people simply skirt the law?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 24, 2009 (boomark / email).