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Immigration status should not have prevented the dangerous working conditions as indicated by the OSHA fines.
Not a lawyer, but I would the the fact that OSHA found issues would help the family's civil case. Hopefully there is someone who can take it on contingency.
> hired by a subcontractor
That's the actual reason his family got nothing.
FTA: "But Pérez wasn’t working directly for Thoma-Sea; he was employed by a contractor. So when he died, Thoma-Sea paid nothing."
The subcontractor's punishment?
"[OSHA] imposed a fine of $41,480 and then, after Thoma-Sea appealed, reduced it to $31,340. As with potential death benefits, none of that money went to Pérez’s family."
You'd think this was a serious security violation which should preclude the company from all government contracts in the future. Hiring someone without legal work authorization makes them a target for coercion. It's a huge risk.
Why was there no action against the company from ICE or the Department of Labor or DHS?
a) Making it a priority to be a thorn in the side fed contractors who are considered to be doing useful shit for other parts of government is bad politics. That would be like the police harassing whatever landscaper is doing all the town buildings.
b) Some dude with a real job and clean record is basically the bottom of the prioritization list.
Yeah, we should probably not have un-vetted foreigners, or people generally, working at naval shipyards but the agencies involved to legitimately have better things to be doing and resources are finite (not to say they don't piss some resources away on dumber things).
And FWIW this was a boring utility ship. They're not hiring people without confirming that their papers "check out" at places like Electric Boat and Norfolk and subcontractors who don't have record of dotting their Is and crossing their Ts like that don't get jobs at those sorts of places.
If the company wasn't adequately screening their landscaping crews the police would at the very least have a quiet word with them.
> Some dude with a real job and clean record is basically the bottom of the prioritization list.
Is the company the "dude" in this scenario? I don't really understand.
They could. It's well within their discretion. Perhaps in cases where optics look like they might become important but unless there's a problem that makes them need to look like they're doing something they likely won't because they don't want to meddle in what some other department has going on. I wouldn't count on them going out of their way like this by default.
>Is the company the "dude" in this scenario? I don't really understand.
The feds mostly harass employers but they also go after individuals if they accumulate criminal records, are wanted in their home countries for really bad stuff, etc.
My point was that the employer and specific individual check boxes that make them both last in line to get harassed.
This is probably one of those case where "nothing changes until there's a body"