AZ business suspended under new employer-sanctions law

by JJ Hensley and Michael Kiefer -
Dec. 17, 2009 03:31 PM
The Arizona Republic .

An Arizona business felt the punitive impact of the Legal Arizona Workers Act for the first time Thursday when Waterworld had its business license suspended for 10 days under the terms of a settlement reached with the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

The agreement marks the first time that an Arizona business has been punished as part of the employer-sanctions law, which went into effect in January 2008.

But the punishment is largely symbolic: Waterworld is no longer in business, and County Attorney Andrew Thomas said at a Thursday afternoon news conference that the license suspension would not affect Waterworld's parent company, Golfland Entertainment Centers.
If Waterworld were to open up again, its license would be suspended for 10 days, Thomas said.

As part of the agreement, Golfland Entertainment, the parent company, a California corporation that operates properties in other states, has agreed to use the E-verify system, verify Social Security numbers and provide proof that all employees are legal if requested.

To go after the corporation, Thomas said, would have been more difficult, especially when the allegation centered on one property in Arizona.

The case centered on a 36-year-old woman named Eloiza Bojoquez-Ayala who was hired at Waterworld in April 2007 under an assumed name. According to the complaint, when the company learned her Social Security was false, she was supposedly fired. However, she was re-hired under another assumed name, according to the complaint, though she was not in the country legally.

Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies raided Waterworld, a water park in northeast Phoenix that Golfland owned, in June 2008 during one of the first large-scale efforts to enforce the law. Deputies arrested 10 employees, including Bojoquez-Ayala, on the site on suspicion of fraud, identity theft and forgery.

Since then, the work-site raids have become increasingly common, but to date the enforcement efforts ensnared mostly workers, leading to criticism that Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas were using the law to target employees instead of the business owners the legislation intended to punish.

The lease for Waterworld was not renewed after it expired and the site in northeast Phoenix was remodeled and now operates as a Wet 'n' Wild. The other water park the company operated in the Valley, Big Surf in Tempe, is scheduled to re-open next year with new management.

While the work-site raids have subsided lately, Thomas' talk of going after employers has started to heat up as the law approached its two-year anniversary mark.

Last month, Thomas announced his office had filed the first employer-sanctions case against an Arizona business when Scottsdale Art Factory was cited in a civil complaint.

"We're now seeing the fruit of these investigations," he said. "Business owners and others should look at these actions as an indication that the law is going to be enforced."

http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/ ... 17-ON.html