Jose, a greengrocer worker in TriBeCa, has tried to avoid the attention of American authorities ever since he stole across the border near Tijuana, Mexico, when he was 14.

Four years ago, though, lawyers from the office of the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, asked him to testify against his employer for wage violations. “They said it made no difference if we had papers or not, that illegal status had no importance,” he said in Spanish.

Mr. Spitzer is most famous for going after Wall Street malfeasance, but in immigrant communities his office is just as well known for its targeted approach to prosecuting violations involving low-wage workers, illegal and legal alike. This approach has won him fans among many immigrants and their advocates, but some employers and lawyers are claiming he has unjustly put a priority on illegal immigrants instead of legal residents.

Ensuring undocumented immigrants are not overlooked is part of a calculated effort begun shortly after Mr. Spitzer took office. “We made a conscious decision,” the director of the attorney general’s labor bureau, Patricia Smith, said.”We looked around and looked at what are the pressing labor law violations in the state of New York, and it was clear that immigrants were the largest proportion of the low-wage segment of the job market.”

Since then, Mr. Spitzer’s office has distinguished itself as a national leader in enforcing labor law regarding low wage workers, employing a “don’t ask” policy when it comes to immigration status. “New York has been way ahead of the pack,” a staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project, Amy Sugimori, said.

In a new national study, NELP, an advocacy organization for low-wage workers, found that New York is one of a handful of states with a dedicated labor bureau that takes a targeted approach toward enforcement. In addition to the campaign Jose took part in, which brokered a code of conduct for small greengrocers, Mr. Spitzer’s office has netted more than $6 million in unpaid wages for West African immigrant delivery workers, has established a day laborer task force, and is working in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to prevent wage violations in small retail shops, among other actions. Members of his office have also appeared on immigrant radio stations to encourage workers to come forward; worked in tandem with community organizing groups and unions, and ensured that employers know reprisals are illegal.

“The attorney general has been a beacon of progressive action and thought regarding the plight many migrant communities face in New York City,” the consul general of Mexico in New York, Arturo Sarukhan, said. “There are few elected officials who have so aggressively sought to protect the rights of immigrants regardless of their migratory status as Spitzer and his office.”

Not everyone is pleased, however, that New York is working hard to protect the rights of illegal immigrants. The chairman and CEO of Gristede’s, John Castimidis, who provided more than $3 million in a settlement with delivery workers, said he took issue with placing the rights of illegal immigrants on the same level as for legal residents. “He’s here to defend citizens and legal entities,” Mr. Castimidis, himself an immigrant from Greece, said. “When you create hardship for legal citizens on behalf of an illegal entity, I have some doubts about that.”

Mr. Spitzer’s office has been outspoken in saying why New York’s labor law looks at legal and illegal immigrants in the same light. Most notably, after the Supreme Court issued a decision three years ago that limited undocumented workers’ ability to get back pay when they have been found to have used false documents to gain employment, the attorney general wrote an opinion stating that the Department of Labor should continue “to enforce New York’s wage payment laws on behalf of undocumented immigrants.”

This decision has resurfaced in a wage case under consideration by New York’s highest court involving an illegal Mexican immigrant seriously injured on the job. The respondent has alleged that the attorney general’s office is sidestepping federal immigration law by advocating on behalf of illegal immigrants. “They will take you to court without concern whether these employees could be hired in the first place,” Reed Podell, an attorney representing the respondent, Taman Management Corporation, said.

The legal status of the employee, however, is not the attorney general’s office’s concern, Ms. Smith, said. Rather, federal immigration law requires the employer, not the state investigator, to inquire about legal status, she said. “He has an obligation that I don’t have,” Ms. Smith said. As an example, she said, “I don’t enforce the federal tax laws either, even though there may be federal tax violations. They hire people off the books, but I don’t have jurisdiction to enforce federal tax laws.”

Laws protecting low-wage immigrant workers have a long legal tradition in New York, Ms. Smith said, noting that many of the laws now being enforced were created to protect the waves that arrived at the turn of the 20th century. Then, as now, she said, immigrants were often the most vulnerable workers. Ensuring employers of illegal immigrants comply with labor law actually benefits legal immigrants and citizens, she said, by ensuring certain base standards are met.

As for Jose, now 31, he is still waiting for an amnesty that won’t likely come anytime soon, but speaking to the attorney general’s office four years ago ended seven years of receiving $3 or $4 an hour and working 72 hours a week, with no benefits. Now, he is paid minimum wage and receives sick days, vacations, and health benefits. Coming forward, he said one day last week as he filled plastic containers with pumpkin seeds and cashews, “changed my life.”