Thread: GA: Mandatory immigrant employee checks to start July

Mandatory immigrant employee checks to start July

Vicky Eckenrode | Friday, May 4, 2007 at 12:30 am

ATLANTA - Big companies wanting to do business with the state will have to start verifying their workers' immigration status under a new law set to take effect this summer.

As part of an illegal immigration crackdown that Georgia legislators approved last year, contractors or subcontractors with 500 or more workers will be required to run information on new employees through a federal Department of Homeland Security database.

They will not be allowed to work on any government contracts without signing affidavits that they ran the verifications. Smaller companies have a couple of more years before being required to run the checks.

"We have found a tool to help Georgia employers comply with the law," said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, who pointed out that most identification checks take only a few seconds and should not be a burden on companies.

Rogers, who last year sponsored the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, known as Senate Bill 529, spoke Thursday at a state Labor Department public hearing. The department is responsible for enforcing the verifications starting July 1.

He said about 500 Georgia-based companies already are enrolled voluntarily in the federal government's checking system, which started in 1997 and was known as the Basic Pilot Program before recently being renamed the Employment Eligibility Verification Program.

Savannah-based Gulfstream Aerospace enrolled earlier this year, with a deadline for the checking system to be in place by September, company spokesman Robert Baugniet said.

"In the interim, we are using the I-9 forms to verify employees' status," he said, referring to forms workers fill out when starting a new job to prove they can work in the U.S.

Many of the Georgia companies that have signed up to use the checking system have enrolled in the past couple of years as the debate over undocumented workers has grown louder.

When lawmakers passed Senate Bill 529 last year, Georgia became the first in the nation to adopt a statewide, comprehensive response to illegal immigration as federal reforms stalled in Congress.

"I think it's important that we all note that 529 merely dictates that the state of Georgia comply with existing federal laws," outspoken illegal immigration critic D.A. King said at Thursday's hearing. "I don't think that's too much to ask."

Rogers said he is considering a measure making more private employers - beyond just those who have contracts with the government - be made to use the verification program.

He said one reason he did not expand the requirement in his bill last year was out of concern that sending employee checks from the entire state's business community could strain the federal database system.

But he said he has since found out that the national program, which fielded 1.7 million checks last year, can handle up to 40 million queries annually.

Colorado, Arizona and Idaho also are about to require employee status be checked to do business with the state, while bills pending in Indiana and Oklahoma are calling for all employers to participate.

Under Georgia's law, contractors and subcontractors working with state or local governments who do not comply with the status checks will be guilty of falsely swearing on their affidavits.

But Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond said there will not be an effective way to monitor whether employers are complying until lawmakers put money into some type of auditing system.

He estimates that it would cost the state $1.3 million to conduct 5,000 random audits a year, which would hit about 17 percent of the companies expected to be affected by the new law.

http://www.savannahnow.com/node/277830

Why have a 500 employee cut-off level?

Why not a cut-off level of > 1 employee and they have to check?


There are scores of contractors and subs with <500 employees.

Another loophole