(Washington Examiner) — An illegal immigrant injured while working can receive workers’ compensation, the District’s highest court has ruled. Palemon Gonzales was working at a D.C. bar as a busboy on June 30, 2005, when a customer threw a bottle that hit Gonzales in the right eye, blinding him. Gonzales, an illegal immigrant, had to have his dislocated lens reattached through surgery, and he wasn’t able to return to work — at a different bar — until Jan. 25, 2006. By then, Gonzales was already in the process of trying to collect workers’ compensation benefits. Asylum Company, which owned the bar where Gonzales was injured, fought the claim, in part, on the grounds that it contends an illegal immigrant can’t receive workers’ compensation.
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