About sixty employees at the popular Boston-based bakery and cafe chain Tatte were recently forced to resign over a lack of proper paperwork requested by the IRS.
A Tatte representative said the breakfast organization, which employs a total of 2,500 people, gave the employees several months to correct the Social Security discrepancies that were identified by the IRS and offered to provide an "While supporting our employees is a priority, we must comply with the law." attorney to consult with them on the documentation
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"Tatte cares deeply about its team members and provides multiple opportunities for our team to correct data that the government has informed us is incorrect," Tatte said in a statement. "While supporting our employees is a priority, we must comply with the law."
President-elect Donald Trump campaigned with a promise to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, and has discussed plans for large-scale immigration enforcement in the first days of his presidency.
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The Boston Globe first reported on the workers being forced out, noting that the IRS notifications are sometimes ignored and do not necessarily indicate that the worker isn't authorized for the work in the U.S.
Immigration attorney Matthew Maiona noted that as well in an interview with NBC10 Boston: "The employees are very nervous, right? They're afraid, and so they might just leave the employer altogether or the employer might terminate them altogether not understanding that these are errors."
Helena DaSilva Hughes, president of the New Bedford-based Immigration Assistance Center, said she believes more employers will be feeling pressure to let undocumented staff go.
"I do believe that this is just a matter of time," she said.
A former part-time Tatte worker named Jessica, a Guatemalan woman who asked not to use her name for fear of being further identified, said she's had friends at Tatte who were recently let go for not having papers.
"They've begun to fire people at other places, so we're not exempt from the possibility it can happen to us," she said in Spanish.