Denied unemployment due to employer not paying unemployment taxes in Illinois?

That may or may not be completely accurate, but IL unemployment does not typically require small farms to pay into unemployment, and therefore employees working on farms don't have unemployment insurance benefits. There are exceptions, but it appears your husband wasn't one of them. This is especially true if you heard this from the unemployment office directly.

What can you do? Find out if he should have been notified that he wasn't eligible for benefits as a farm worker. Call you legislator and let them know exactly what you think about how farm labor is treated differently than other types of labor.

You have your numbers mixed up, that would be 20k per year, but the legal facts are that employers who have 5 or fewer full time employees are exempt from unemployment deductions. You have no legal recourse because the owner of the farm was not required under federal tax law to pay in.

Well I am sure he was getting paid cash. So there is no real record of what actually happened. You can go to court and sue the farmer.