showing your"green card" when applying for a job is too much work according to the feds

the Washington Post --

The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit filed on behalf of Zainul Singaporewalla, a U.S. permanent resident who applied for a math teaching position at Glendale Community College stating that the network of community colleges are acting illegally by requiring noncitizens to provide their green cards before they could be hired for work.

[you know that annoying little I-9 form that we are all required to fill out to prove that we have the RIGHT to work in the United States]

The suit against the Phoenix-area Maricopa Community Colleges claiming that the colleges discriminated against nearly 250 non-citizen applicants because they had to provide more documents than required by law to prove their eligibility to work.

"That violated the federal Immigration and Nationality Act," Justice officials said.
The law's antidiscrimination provision "makes it unlawful to treat authorized workers differently during the hiring process based on their citizenship status," said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for Justice's Civil Rights Division. He said the government "is acting now to remedy this pattern or practice of discrimination."

Singaporewalla after filling out the federal I-9 form and presenting a drivers license and Social Security card, was also asked to produce more documentation including his green card, which he did not have.

remember a drivers license in some states is not proof of citizenship and unless you have an original Social Security card, that also is not proof of citizenship.

The government is asking a judge to order the Maricopa colleges to pay an $1100 civil penalty for each of the 247 non-US citizen job applicants.

according to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services , the definition of a permanent resident "is someone who has been granted authorization to live and work in the United States on a permanent basis. As proof of that status, a person is granted a permanent resident card, commonly called a [green card]"

A couple questions arise, if Singaporewalla is a permanent resident, then he should have been given a green card to prove that, and therefore that verifies that he has the right to work within the United States.

While the law does state that it is unlawful to treat authorized workers differently based on their citizenship status, which is the point that had to be proved by a valid and appropriate documentation.

Secondly, Singaporewalla's has to remember being a noncitizen, that he may be required to fill out an extra form or two as compared to other applicants who are US citizens.

In short, if he would've been carrying the required green card in the first place, I don't believe that this would've been an issue.