3:53 PM, Feb. 21, 2012

Written by
Jason Noble

Opponents of legislation adding penalties for Iowa employers who hire undocumented workers and requiring them to use a federal employment-eligibility program packed a hearing room on Tuesday where lawmakers considered the matter.

But the House Judiciary Committee approved House File 2156 on a 13-8 vote, advancing it to the House floor for further consideration.

The bill requires businesses to screen potential employees through the federal E-Verify program and creates a complaint process in which county attorneys or the state attorney general would investigate allegations of businesses employing illegal immigrants.

In instances in which illegal immigrants are employed, businesses would be required to fire the workers and face a suspension of their business license for up to 10 days. A second violation within three years would prompt a permanent revocation of an employer’s business license. The bill also contains penalties for filing false or frivolous complaints.

E-Verify is an internet-based system for checking an employee’s work eligibility.

Many of those present at the hearing were with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, an advocacy group supporting immigrant rights, which opposed the measure.

CCI Community Organizer Vanessa Marcano said she believed E-Verify was “glitchy” and unreliable, and too frequently pegged workers with the legal right to work in the U.S. as undocumented and unemployable.

She also worried the verification and complaint processes could create “a climate of fear and hostility” in which legal immigrants would be threatened or discriminated against.

“It’s a problem because it instills fear in the community that there are these laws that are targeting minorities,” Marcano said. “They could provoke racial discrimination or racial profiling at workplaces.”

But the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, argued just the opposite. Businesses and workers alike are harmed by the current situation, in which employing undocumented workers is illegal but enforcement is lax.

Businesses that follow the law risk being undercut by more unscrupulous competitors. Legal workers similarly risk having their wages and work opportunities undermined by undocumented ones. And those undocumented workers are prime targets for exploitation, since an employer knows they’re unlikely to complain to authorities.

“It puts you in a position where if you’re going to obey the law, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage,” Garrett said. “That’s not fair.”

Garrett also disputed the critique of E-Verify. The system’s accuracy has steadily improved, and so that now just three workers in every thousand are hit with a false positive.

“The system has got better over time,” he said.

Undocumented-worker bill advances despite rights group's opposition | The Des Moines Register | DesMoinesRegister.com