http://www.seacoastonline.com/news/0307 ... /91255.htm

By Kathy McCormack
Associated Press

CONCORD - The House has been dealing with an array of bills aimed at employers, hospitals and others in an attempt to curb illegal immigration in New Hampshire. Now, nearly half of the Senate is coming out in support of a bill that would set up new penalties for businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

The bill proposes establishing state registration requirements for "employers of aliens and new penalties for employers of illegal aliens."

If a business hasn’t complied and if, during an unannounced state Labor Department inspection illegal immigrants are apprehended, the business will be fined to up to $2,500 a day and the presence of the illegal immigrants will reported to the federal government.

The bill proposes that local law-enforcement agencies enter into agreements - called memorandums of understanding - with the U.S. Attorney General to work with federal immigration officials in enforcing the law. The federal government allows such agreements with the Department of Homeland Security.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday. Other bills on the House side, such as allowing police to charge illegal aliens with trespassing and prohibiting the state Health Department from serving illegal immigrants, have not passed muster with legislators.

"Illegal aliens are taking jobs from law-abiding New Hampshire citizens (including legal aliens)," Sen. Dick Green R-Rochester, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement Monday. "Worse, the ‘costs’ of their employment are being transferred to our publicly supported local facilities, including schools and hospitals, further raising our already exploding health insurance rates and municipal budgets."

Federal enforcement of immigration law "is hopelessly inadequate," he said. "Meanwhile, business interests who benefit financially pretend there is nothing they can do about it."

As it stands today, state laws that prohibit the employment of illegal aliens are pre-empted by federal law, Green said.

"What can we do? We can empower law enforcement to work with federal immigration officials to become certified to help enforce. We can have everyone whose premises provide a worksite for alien labor register with the New Hampshire Department of Labor and retain records documenting compliance with state labor laws. We can increase responsibility and penalties for violating state labor protection laws," Green said.

While Green believes the bill wouldn’t trigger federal pre-emption, immigration lawyer Mona Movafaghi disagrees.

"The federal government said that the states cannot regulate unauthorized aliens in the workplace, and it’s specifically and explicitly pre-empted," she said.

"I think that they thought that by going under the memorandum of understanding, then they would be allowed to enforce any immigration law ... and then they made this state law," Movafaghi said. "But the state law in itself they can’t do because it’s explicitly pre-empted by the federal law."

She added, "Do these people want to drive out whatever small base of manufacturing is left in New Hampshire?"

The state Attorney General’s office has not take a position on the Senate bill or the House bills. In hearings before a House committee, the office said it found "significant constitutional issues" with at least some of the measures and they would be difficult to defend if challenged, maintaining that immigration law is the exclusive authority of the federal government.

The legislative proposals follow a decision by Attorney General Kelly Ayotte last year to not appeal a New Hampshire district court judge’s ruling that dismissed trespassing charges against a group of illegal immigrants arrested in New Ipswich and Hudson. The judge said the police chiefs violated the Constitution by trying to enforce federal laws. The police chiefs reasoned that if the immigrants were in the country illegally, then they were in their towns illegally, too.