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Sounds like the kind of Stupid Human Trick that ends up with "and the guy was shot by his own rifle" that may engender amusement in those who think hunting is immoral.
Depending on how well the vetting was done, I guess. There was a story about someone working in a crèche here who had all the relevant clearance for working with kids and still got caught on CCTV being physically abusive. And I remember years ago when I was in third level education where the college hired someone who later turned out to be on the run from charges of assault in Sweden.
So even good checks can have someone slip through the cracks, and maybe this guy used the fact that he was an immigrant to cover up any gaps in the background check? (e.g. "Yeah, I am waiting for the government office back home to get that paperwork, you know the kind of delays that happen").
The story sounds odd, though. Wikipedia has a scanty article up, and it says that he was working as school principal back in 2012. So he was in the US presumably on some kind of sports scholarship, graduated, got (it would seem) a fairly high level of education - and then started work? But he was supposed to be finally deported in 2024? I don't understand what was going on there.
It is a strange situation. U.S. employers are usually required to confirm US citizenship or legal residency and work authorization before hiring someone, and while some employers are notoriously lax about this, school districts and other state institutions usually are not. If you don't produce a birth certificate and social security card at some point before your first paycheck, you won't be able to keep your job.
Is that true for state/city governments? I'm reaching back a lot here, but I thought a lot of the laws the government uses here required the torturing of the commerce clause that was common between ~1940-2000 and didn't apply to government agencies themselves.
Of course, plenty of government positions do background checks for their own reasons, but I thought there was a big difference in this particular case.
Federal law requires employers to submit an I-9 employment eligibility verification form for all employees. Employees have to provide suitable documentation proving they are eligible to work legally in the US. Technically you can't require someone to be a US citizen, but proof of citizenship would be one way to prove you can legally work here.
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This seems apples and oranges. There is no background check which can 100% assure you that someone is not abusive, or not a North Korean spy.
By contrast, if someone has a work visa is something which can be determined on a prima farcie basis. Sure, it is possible that he forged his visa, or stole an identity, or obtained his visa based on false statements, or blackmailed an official into improperly granting his visa, and I would not expect a school district to do the kind of digging to find these. But from what we know so far, it sounds more like they did not even check.
Is employing someone without checking their visa status (or nationality) an offense, criminal or regulatory?
I don't expect 100% of background checks to be 100% perfect.
The guy in question has held at least 4 different jobs in four different districts (three different states plus DC). All four either didn't do a background or the background failed? Dude's got pretty good luck or the background check system school districts use is a farce.
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What a great typo!
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My assumption is that he had some sort of bridging status that got formally revoked at the end of 2024, which might answer the question of how he managed to get into the job (since I assume HR's not doing quarterly immigration status checks)
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