In Episode 21 of Hard Hats & Justice, host Chris Gorayeb opens with the story of an undocumented worker who fell 15 feet from a scaffold with no guardrails, breaking his leg, cracking two ribs, and suffering a serious shoulder injury, only to be handed cash at the hospital by an employer who threatened to have immigration called if he filed a workers compensation claim. Every threat that employer made was illegal, and the cash he received was a fraction of what New York law owed him. Chris grounds the episode in research from the Center for Migration Studies of New York showing that immigrants make up roughly 63 percent of New York City's construction workforce and approximately 41 percent of those immigrant workers are undocumented, a rate five times higher than the undocumented share of the overall city workforce. He then lays out the plain language of the statute: New York Workers' Compensation Law covers all workers injured on the job in New York regardless of immigration status. According to the New York State Workers' Compensation Board and the NYC Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, undocumented workers may be eligible for weekly cash payments and free health care even if paid in cash, off the books, or misclassified as independent contractors.

Chris then walks through the controlling case law, the 2006 New York Court of Appeals decision in Balbuena v. IDR Realty LLC, which held that an undocumented worker injured on a job site due to labor law violations may recover compensation despite immigration status, and that the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act does not preempt New York State labor law unless the employer proves the worker submitted false documentation to obtain employment. Practically, this means the Scaffold Law, Labor Law Section 200, and third party claims for falling objects or defective equipment apply equally to undocumented workers. He addresses employer threats directly, citing New York City Human Rights Law and the New York State Attorney General's Office, which confirm that threatening, retaliating against, or reporting immigrant workers to authorities for exercising their legal rights is illegal and can trigger criminal and civil penalties. He acknowledges one honest complication: lost wages calculations in third party lawsuits become more complex for undocumented workers, but Balbuena directly addressed that issue too, holding that employers who failed to comply with immigration verification requirements cannot then weaponize immigration status as a defense. He closes with a direct message that the law protects everyone, and that fear of deportation should never be the reason a worker walks away from what they are owed.

About Gorayeb & Associates, P.C.

Founded in 1981, Gorayeb & Associates, P.C. is one of New York's leading personal injury law firms, specializing in construction accident litigation. The firm has represented more than 12,000 injured workers and secured over $2 billion in verdicts and settlements. The firm provides bilingual legal services and free community education to immigrant and working class communities across the five boroughs.

For more information visit: https://www.gorayeb.com/en/

Keywords

undocumented construction workers, immigration status rights, ew York Workers Compensation, Scaffold Law protection, employer retaliation, ICE threats illegal, third party lawsuit, Labor Law Section 200, Chris Gorayeb