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Businesses fear becoming ‘immigration police’


Wednesday, July 12, 2006

By MIKE SACCONE

The Daily Sentinel


Area business owners said Tuesday they worry that worker-verification legislation emerging from the Legislature’s special session would force businesses to be the immigration police.

At the end of five days of tense debate and political deal making, lawmakers approved several bills Monday that, starting in July 2007, would force Colorado businesses to verify their employees are legally present in the United States.

As part of one bill, businesses that show “reckless disregard” for their employees’ work eligibility are subject to being fined $5,000 for their first offense and $25,000 for every subsequent offense.

Dennis Clark, an owner of Clark Family Orchards in Palisade, said the bill likely will not have any impact on his hiring process. He said in accord with federal law he has always required job applicants to provide two forms of identification.

He said even though one or two illegal immigrants might have been able to slip through with forged documents, he has never knowingly or recklessly hired an illegal immigrant.

“I don’t need any issues with the liability or the illegal aspect of employing illegals,” Clark said. “There’s enough, I feel, legitimately documented men up here that we try to use.”

Bruce Talbott, orchards manager at Talbott Farms in Palisade, said even if an auditor from the Department of Labor and Employment could prove a firm had hired illegal immigrants, they would have a hard time showing a business did it knowingly, given the quality of fake IDs he has come across.

“The documents which I have seen that I thought were fake were incredible documents; they’re not poorly done,” Talbott said. “They’ve got the hologram, they’re got the embossment I’d have no way of knowing.

“They are hoping businesses will be the cops, but I don’t see it as very effective.”

Diane Schwenke, president of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce, said “the devil was in the details” with how state agencies interpret key sections of the bill.

“For the most part, employers want to abide by the law. They want to hire employees who are legitimately in this country,” Schwenke said. “What will be telling if this bill passes is how it’s enforced.”

She said if government agencies decide an employer’s failure to maintain a backlog of identification documents constitutes “reckless disregard,” then the cost on local firms could be severe for those who accidentally misplace copies of workers’ IDs.

Schwenke warned that as state lawmakers attempt to eliminate the loopholes that illegal immigrants slip through to obtain jobs, they could make doing business in the state more difficult. She said the more the state regulates businesses — for whatever reason — the more it will cost business owners to maintain their bottom line.

“The regulatory environment, for the most part, adds to the cost of doing business without adding any true value to the product,” she said.

Matthew Elam, human resources director of Elam Construction Inc., said even though the Legislature has not imposed any unbearable stresses on businesses to date, he said as Grand Junction continues to grow and the job market continues to be tight, firms might be tempted to be less vigilant.”

In addition to stricter employee tracking provisions, lawmakers also approved several tax-related measures during the special session:

one bill on the November ballot will ask voters if businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants should have their wage-related tax deduction taken away.

another law passed during the session will direct employers to withhold state income tax at a rate of 4.63 percent from any employee who cannot provide a valid taxpayer identification number.