Thread: MT: Proposal targets illegal residents

http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles ... llegal.txt

Proposal targets illegal residents
By The Associated Press
1/13/07

HELENA - A Democratic lawmaker from northwestern Montana, where construction is booming and the work force stretched thin, wants stiffer penalties for businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

House Bill 185, introduced by Rep. Mike Jopek, D-Whitefish, would allow the government to shut down a business the third time it was caught knowingly employing undocumented workers. He told the House Judiciary Committee on Friday that it is time to "take action" on a growing problem.

"This is an issue that faces Montana more and more," Jopek said, adding that "it's the county taxpayers that pay that burden."

Jopek's bill was supported at the committee meeting by social conservatives and union members. They said punishing businesses would protect undocumented workers from unfair wages and working conditions. "I'm amazed that we continue to turn a deaf ear to the 21st-century slave trade that exists in this country," said Lynn Stumberg of the Eagle Forum, a socially conservative activist group. "It is greed, not concern for human rights, that drives employers to pay below minimum wage and union pay to these undocumented workers."

Keith Allen, of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the "three strikes" clause in the bill made sense.

"Once is OK. Twice you better start paying attention." Allen said. "And if you do it three times, you're a bad actor, (and) you need to stop doing business in Montana."

But the bill may cause more problems than it solves, according to small-business advocates. Riley Johnson of the National Federation of Independent Business told the committee he was troubled by language in the bill giving the courts authority to strip the licenses of any business that broke the new law.

"My biggest fear ... is that you are broaching the professional licensing system that we have established in this state over many, many, many years and many, many laws," Johnson said. "We have a very elaborate system here set up."

Several committee members also had questions about the language of the bill. Jopek told the lawmakers he was open to small changes in the measure.

"Amend it," he said. "Let's make it work."

"Once is OK. Twice you better start paying attention." Allen said. "And if you do it three times, you're a bad actor, (and) you need to stop doing business in Montana."

Once is NOT ok

Once should be $10,000 fine per illegal on jobsite,

Twice time should be 1 year mandatory prison time per illegal on jobsite

Third time should be closing the business along with forfeiture of all business and personal assets.

Vol. 18 No. 3 Issue Date 1/18/2007

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You hire, you lose
by Paul Peters
Labor Pains

The arrest of several dozen illegal immigrants working on construction sites in Flathead County last year has prompted legislative action on the part of Whitefish Representative Mike Jopek.

Jopek has sponsored a bill allowing the state to revoke the business license of any company convicted of knowingly hiring illegal aliens for a third time, which would essentially shut such companies down.

The bill has created some unusual bedfellows. Jopek, a liberal Democrat, finds himself supported by both the Eagle Forum, a conservative “pro-family” nonprofit that often criticizes labor unions, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Unions.

“There is a place where the far left and the far right do come together,” Jopek says.

So far, his only opposition comes from the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit small-business advocacy group.

In the past, businesses employing illegal aliens in Flathead County have complained to local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers that there aren’t enough legal workers in the valley to meet demand. This year, the Flathead achieved its lowest unemployment rate ever, while breaking records for the number of jobs available at Job Services.

But Jopek questions the notion that Flathead County has a labor shortage.

“We have a wage shortage,” he says.

By bringing in illegal workers, he says, companies avoid paying the wages necessary to attract new employees to the valley.

We asked Jopek about the possibility that the law could push employers to decline to hire anyone who even looks foreign, for fear of losing their licenses.

Jopek responds: “If [employers] have questions, they need to do a better job of working with the Department of Labor and Industry” to establish a potential worker’s residency.

Still, there may be a loophole in Jopek’s proposed law.

In 2005, according to the Washington Post, ICE won only 127 convictions against companies accused of knowingly hiring an illegal alien.

Last year, Kalispell-based ICE officer Don McPherson told the Independent that none of the Flathead companies he found employing illegal aliens were convicted.

That, he said, “is a pretty difficult charge to prove.”
















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