Thread: Georgia immigration law expanding to more employers

Friday, June 13, 2008
Georgia immigration law expanding to more employers
Atlanta Business Chronicle -
by Dave Williams Staff writer

‘Much more severe’: Starting July 1, companies that employ at least 100 workers seeking government contracts will have to verify the immigration status of prospective employees.


Beset by congressional indecision over illegal immigration on one side and voters clamoring for action on the other, Georgia lawmakers stepped out on their own in 2006 and passed a major reform bill.

Two years later, the only thing all sides of the debate over Georgia's unilateral crackdown agree on is they don't like how the law is playing out.

Opponents of illegal immigration say the law isn't being enforced.

Contractors affected by the law complain they're being forced to play immigration cops.

And advocates for immigrants say it is contributing to an increasingly hostile climate for Latinos in Georgia Â*-- including legal residents and U.S. citizens Â*-- that is driving them away.

All of that and the law hasn't even taken full effect.

The legislative compromise that eased the bill's passage both delayed the law's effective date until July 1, 2008, and phased in its provisions.

The law requires government agencies and private companies seeking government contracts to verify the immigration status of prospective employees, using a federal electronic verification system to screen for workers who are not in this country legally.

During its first year, the law has applied only to agencies and companies with 500 or more employees. But starting July 1 this year, that threshold will be lowered to employers with at least 100 workers.

"Far more employers are going to be covered by it," said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration lawyer. "The pain is going to become much more severe."

Even those few government agencies and contractors that are large enough to come under the law have been ignoring it, said Sen. Chip Rogers, the 2006 bill's chief sponsor.

Rogers, R-Woodstock, blamed cities and counties for not forcing contractors to abide by the employee verification requirements.

As of the first week in May, nearly half of Georgia's 159 counties still had not enrolled in the federal E-Verify system, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, while only about one-quarter of Georgia cities had signed up for the program.

The Georgia Department of Labor wrote the rules for the new law.

But Taryn Trent, the agency's legal services officer, said it is not the state's job to make sure local governments are complying.

"The various government entities are enforcing it because they do their own contracts," she said.

But Rogers said the state should do more than simply write the rules.

"The Department of Labor is charged with making sure employers in Georgia follow employment law," he said. "Why they would treat this any differently, I'm not sure."

While Rogers criticized the labor department for failing to enforce the new law, contractors were upset when some local governments enacted ordinances that are stricter than the state requirements.

A prime example of that came last summer, when the Gwinnett County Commission passed an ordinance requiring contractors wishing to do business with the county to check the immigration status of their current employees, not just new hires.

The Associated General Contractors of America sued, and the county backed off. Mark Woodall, president of the contractors' Georgia branch, said such local provisions force builders to follow one set of rules in one community and different rules elsewhere.

"We are contractors ... not document experts," he said. "We don't feel like we should be put in a position of being federal immigration regulators."

While the law didn't apply to many Georgia businesses during its first year because of the phase in, anti-illegal immigration activists say the threat of a crackdown it represents has had a major impact.

D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society, an organization that opposes illegal immigration, said Spanish-language newspapers are full of stories of illegal immigrants leaving Georgia, some heading to their native Mexico. "Even the promise of enforcement works," he said.

Besides stepped-up enforcement, the economic downturn also is prompting many immigrants -- legal and illegal -- to consider returning home.

Many Latinos are employed in the construction industry, which is being particularly hard hit by the slump.

According to a survey by the Inter-American Development Bank, only half of the Latino immigrants in the U.S. now send money regularly to relatives in their home countries, down from 73 percent two years ago.

Kuck said the effects of the crackdown on illegal immigrants in Georgia won't really be felt until the economy rebounds. When that happens, he said, industries that rely heavily on illegal immigrants won't be able to find enough workers.

"It's not like people are lining up to pluck chickens in the poultry industry or pick crops in South Georgia," said Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials.

Gonzalez pointed to a study by The Perryman Group, a Texas-based economic analysis firm, showing that Georgia would be among the hardest hit states if all illegal workers were removed from its economy.

But King said the notion that Americans no longer are willing to perform certain jobs is a myth being perpetrated by the open-borders lobby.

"It's not that they don't want a job," he said. "They have this funny proclivity for asking for a living wage in their own country."

While the law's supporters welcome the tougher workplace provisions about to take effect, even the most ardent backers of the state crackdown say it's not a substitute for federal action.

Back in 2006, Rogers said he was introducing the bill only because Congress wasn't willing to tackle illegal immigration.

Woodall said it's in the best interests of any multi-state business to have a single national law.

"This thing doesn't need to be addressed at the state and local levels," he said. "It is our utmost desire that this be addressed at the federal level."

Reach Williams at davewilliams@ bizjournals.com.

http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stor ... %5E1650218

"But King said the notion that Americans no longer are willing to perform certain jobs is a myth being perpetrated by the open-borders lobby.

"It's not that they don't want a job," he said. "They have this funny proclivity for asking for a living wage in their own country."


Now isn't that the truth. I said that to my Congressman's office just today.