Thread: AZ: Sanctions law begins Tuesday

Sanctions law begins Tuesday
Many Ariz. businesses are still unprepared
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Dec. 30, 2007 12:00 AM

The starting bell for Arizona's new employer-sanctions law is about to toll.

After surviving two court challenges, the law punishing businesses that knowingly employ illegal workers goes into effect in two days.

And still, many businesses are not ready.

As of Friday, 9,062 employers in Arizona had signed up for E-Verify. That is just about 6 percent of the approximately 150,000 employers in Arizona. Some don't know about the law. Others are procrastinating. Some plan to use outside services that check workers' status for a fee. Some are waiting to sign up until they need to hire workers, while still others would prefer to remain willfully blind about which workers are legal and which are not.

The state sanctions law is the toughest in the nation. It is aimed at turning off the job magnet that has drawn more than 500,000 undocumented immigrants to Arizona. In addition to punishing businesses for knowingly employing illegal workers, the measure requires employers to use a federal online computer program known as E-Verify to check the work eligibility of all new employees hired after Jan. 1.

The requirement is the most sweeping change Arizona's 150,000 employers will face under the law and one that employers have been slow to warm up to as businesses groups and local officials wrangle over the law's constitutionality and enforcement.

There is no penalty for not signing up for E-Verify, but employers that use the program are given a stronger defense against being accused of knowingly or intentionally employing illegal workers, said Jay Zweig, a Phoenix employment lawyer who advises businesses about the program.

"If you use it, you have a 'rebuttable presumption' that the employee is legally authorized to work," Zweig said.

Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas says he will begin investigating complaints of illegal hiring immediately. But it could be months before any business is charged with violating the law because it will be difficult to prove that an employer knowingly hired illegal workers.


Not signing up


The sanctions law has survived two court challenges so far. On Dec. 7, U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake tossed out the first lawsuit on a technicality. A hearing on the merits of the second lawsuit by business groups that claim the sanctions law is unconstitutional is scheduled for Jan. 16 in U.S. District Court, and a ruling from that hearing is expected by the end of January.

Many employers have been waiting to see whether the sanctions law survives legal challenges before signing up out of fear that E-Verify will be costly to use, onerous and error-prone, say business groups and lawyers.

Last year, a congressional audit found that 4 percent of the time E-Verify, then called the Basic Pilot Program, initially labeled workers ineligible for employment when in fact they had work authorization. That means that one in 25 times a name is wrongly rejected by the program.

A September report by the private research company Westat Corp. found that the error rate for naturalized citizens was even higher. Nearly 10 percent of naturalized citizens are deemed ineligible to work at first, when in fact they are eligible, the report said.

Sharon Rummery, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the program's accuracy has improved. She said E-Verify is free and easy to use.

There was a small rush on the system at the end of last week, as about 840 new employers signed up Thursday and Friday.

Others see no reason to sign up until they are ready to hire new employees. Or they are contracting with third-party firms that use E-Verify to do employment verification checks for them for a fee. Some simply remain unaware of the new requirements.

But there also is an underlying reason why so many employers still haven't signed up, though few may admit it: They don't want to know which workers are legal or illegal.

"To those employers who want to remain willfully blind to illegal hiring, E-Verify is an enemy, but to the taxpayers of Arizona who bear the economic costs of illegal immigrants, E-Verify is good," said state Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, one of the Legislature's main supporters of the sanctions law.

Some business advocates and economists agree that many employers are reluctant to use E-Verify because screening out illegal workers will cut off a major source of labor, especially in industries that depend heavily on immigrant labor, such as the construction, restaurant, manufacturing and service industries.

The problem is not illegal immigration; it's too few immigrant-worker visas to meet labor demands of the state's expanding economy, they say.

"I think many employers are scared of finding out who is here illegally," said Steve Chucri, president if the Arizona Restaurant and Hospitality Association, which is part of the consortium challenging the sanctions law in court. Illegal workers make up 10 to 12 percent of the state's workforce, according to the Pew Hispanic Center and the Center for Immigration Studies.


The hiring process


Not having a tough sanctions law in place has allowed employers to meet labor needs and still remain in compliance with federal immigration laws, said Dawn McLaren, a research economist at Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business.

In the past, many undocumented immigrants were able to use fake documents to find work. Under federal law, employers are required to accept the documents so long as they appear valid.

"This has allowed them to not 'knowingly' hire illegal workers," McLaren said.

Supporters of a legal workforce and the sanctions law contend that undocumented immigrants take jobs from Americans and drive down wages. The say that businesses that use illegal workers have an edge over those not using illegal labor because the former can often avoid costs for insurance and taxes and pay lower wages.

But some economists say rather than take jobs from Americans, illegal immigrants are filling gaps in the state's workforce created by a surplus of jobs. The state's unemployment rate remains among the lowest in the nation. It climbed to 4.1 percent in November after bottoming out at 3.3 percent in September, a 40-year low, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

As a result, businesses in many low-skilled industries have had a hard time finding enough workers, turning instead to immigrant workers to fill jobs, McLaren said.

Under the sanctions law, employers will be required to run the names, Social Security numbers and other personal information of new hires through the federal government's E-Verify program.


New law strict


Although several states also have passed employer-sanctions laws, Arizona's is the only one that requires all employers to use E-Verify, which remains voluntary at the federal level. That will put Arizona on unequal competitive footing with other states, said Jim Harper of the Cato Institute, a libertarian research organization in Washington, D.C.

"We are spending money and time to actually reduce the productivity of the economy," said Harper, who instead favors opening up more legal channels for immigrants to work in the U.S.

State Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, who wrote the sanctions law, said it is a "myth" that illegal immigrants are needed to fill labor gaps in Arizona. Any gaps in Arizona's labor force could easily be filled by legal workers from states with high unemployment rates or by unemployed Arizonans driven out of the workforce because of depressed wages created by illegal immigration.

He also said businesses that leave the state because of the sanctions law will be replaced by new ones that come in to fill the void.

"This will all work out under the free-market system," he said.

It remains to be seen how evenly the sanctions law will be enforced around the state. The law will primarily be enforced by the state's 15 counties.

In Maricopa County, however, the state's economic and population center, Thomas, the county attorney, and Joe Arpaio, the sheriff, have said employers can expect vigorous enforcement. To enforce the law, Thomas and Arpaio said they will rely mostly on complaints from the public about employers thought to be hiring illegal workers, including those made anonymously.

www.azcentral.com

The problem is not illegal immigration; it's too few immigrant-worker visas to meet labor demands of the state's expanding economy, they say.

The problem is ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION and too many companies wanting massive profits.

While checking the immigration status of the workers, Federal Officials should check the legal status of the employers as well. Illegal employers exploit illegal immigrants too.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds"- Samuel Adams

Here is an article fro Hoy. Can someone pass on this guy's quote: says if he doesn't have work he will just return home.


Arizona Law punishes hundreds of undocumented

Arizona --
Hundreds of illegal immigrants have been dismissed from their jobs because of a new Arizona law that penalizes employers, said attorneys immigrants.

The law, which comes into force on January 1, has forced many companies to review the forms of its employees. Those who can not provide the information they are asked or those who recognize that they have no documents have been dismissed.

It is not known how many joined those dismissed, but the numbers reach the hundreds, perhaps thousands, said Julie Pace, a Phoenix lawyer who audited the forms of workers representing companies that oppose the law.

Rebecca Winterscheidt, a Phoenix lawyer who defends immigrants, said that some workers go to their employers, they say they are in the country illegally and ask for help.

In such cases, he said, an employer can only cesantear worker.

The Sanctions Act, signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano in July, prohibits companies hire undocumented immigrants to sabienas and obligate them to use a federal database to see if the workers they hire comply with all the requirements.

Eligio Medina Roldan, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico City, worked in a warehouse in Phoenix four years with forged documents.

But weeks ago, a supervisor of the parent company of Texas questioned him about the information he had provided in its form. Roldan said he was given eight days to demonstrate that it was able to work legally in the country, if not lose their jobs.

"I have no papers to show that I can work legally, so I will not be able to work," he said. "And if I can not work, I have no reason to be here. My only option is to return."

Companies employing undocumented intentionally or knowingly can be suspended for 10 days for the first time and on a permanent basis if relapse.

Terrorism and immigration

For his part, Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo defended last Friday an announcement of his presidential campaign linking illegal immigration to terrorism, saying that the deaths of Americans due to the lack of border security are as real as those caused by traffic accidents .

"If my ad is a promoter of fear, then the organization Mothers Against Ebrios drivers should apologize for saying that handle intoxicated kills innocent people. Isto make open borders," said Congressman in a column published on Friday The Denver Post newspaper.

Tancredo, a candidate with little chance to gain their party's nomination and has made immigration the central issue, he mentioned the testimony in 2006 that gave the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, in the Congress, that there is evidence of that people born in the Middle East are learning Spanish and Latin American assuming identities.

Tancredo said that there is evidence that Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group that the United States considers a terrorist group, is being organized in Central and South America.

Tancredo was responding to an editorial in the Post published earlier this week that its ad campaign termed as "exaggerated rhetoric and promoter of fear."

http://www.hoyinternet.com/reportajes/e ... g-heds-top