Cite as: 535 U. S. 137 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
Tan, 467 U. S., at 901 (citing Seven-Up Bottling, 344 U. S., at 346; Phelps Dodge Corp. v. NLRB, 313 U. S. 177, 198 (1941)), without triggering new IRCA violations, either by tendering false documents to employers or by finding employers willing to ignore IRCA and hire illegal workers. The Board here has failed to even consider this tension. See 326 N. L. R. B., at 1063, n. 10 (finding that Castro adequately mitigated damages through interim work with no mention of ALJ findings that Castro secured interim work with false documents).5
We therefore conclude that allowing the Board to award backpay to illegal aliens would unduly trench upon explicit statutory prohibitions critical to federal immigration policy, as expressed in IRCA. It would encourage the successful evasion of apprehension by immigration authorities, condone prior violations of the immigration laws, and encourage future violations. However broad the Board's discretion to
5 When questioned at oral argument about the tension between affirmative mitigation duties under the NLRA and explicit prohibitions against employment of illegal aliens in IRCA, the Government candidly stated: "[T]he board has not examined this issue in detail." Tr. of Oral Arg. 32. Justice Breyer says that we should nonetheless defer to the Govern-ment's view that the Board's remedy is entirely consistent with IRCA. Post, at 161 (dissenting opinion). But such deference would be contrary to Southern S. S. Co. v. NLRB, 316 U. S. 31, 40-46 (1942), where the Government told us that the Board's remedy was entirely consistent with the federal maritime laws, and NLRB v. Bildisco & Bildisco, 465 U. S. 513, 529-532 (1984), where the Government told us that the Board's remedy was entirely consistent with the Bankruptcy Code, and Sure-Tan, 467 U. S., at 892-894, 902-905, where the Government told us that the Board's remedy was entirely consistent with the INA. See also Carpenters v. NLRB, 357 U. S. 93, 108-110 (1958) (rejecting Government position that we should defer to the Board's interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Act). We did not defer to the Government's position in any of these cases, and there is even less basis for doing so here since IRCA—unlike the maritime statutes, the Bankruptcy Code, or the INA—not only speaks directly to matters of employment but expressly criminalizes the only employment relationship at issue in this case.
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