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Poll: Penalties favored in immigration battle

Associated Press
Jan. 25, 2006 12:00 AM

TEMPE - Voters heavily favor Gov. Janet Napolitano's idea to penalize businesses that hire undocumented immigrants, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The statewide poll of 395 registered voters said that 80 percent agreed with her idea.

Eleven percent opposed it, while 9 percent of people said they had no opinion, according to the poll by KAET-TV and Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

In her address to the Legislature earlier this month, Napolitano said those who intentionally hire undocumented immigrants "should face substantial fines and penalties."

Still, she hasn't made a proposal to confront the problem on a wide scale.

Although federal law prohibits employers from hiring people they know to be undocumented immigrants, the Pew Hispanic Center estimates that illegal workers account for 10 percent of all workers in Arizona, the country's busiest illegal entry point.

Some advocates for overhauling America's broken immigration system said employers who take advantage of the low wages accepted by undocumented immigrants are, in effect, fueling illicit border crossings.

Businesses say they struggle to find workers to fill jobs in the construction, agricultural and service industries and that they do their best to follow the government's deeply flawed employment eligibility policies.

Late last year, Napolitano ordered state contractors to guarantee their employees aren't undocumented immigrants and to let state agencies inspect employment eligibility records for those workers to see whether the rule is being followed.

The Legislature is considering three proposals to confront illegal hirings.

Napolitano's views on those proposals weren't immediately available.

The poll also said that 65 percent of those surveyed favor Napolitano's proposal to station additional National Guard troops along the state's international boundary with Mexico to improve border security. Twenty-five percent disagree with her proposal. Ten percent said they had no opinion.

The governor is asking the military to pay for stationing an unspecified number of National Guard troops at the Arizona-Mexico border.

The state already has about 170 National Guard troops stationed at the border, assisting federal and state officers with communications, fence construction and anti-drug efforts.

The poll was taken Jan. 19-22 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.