Thread: Arizona firms brace for immigration sanctions law

Arizona firms brace for immigration sanctions law
Sun Dec 30, 2007 9:41am EST
By Tim Gaynor

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Arizona steel fabricator Sheridan Bailey has been laying off employees in recent weeks even though he has plenty of orders on the books.

His firm, Ironco Enterprises, shed around 10 percent of its 100-strong workforce to get in line with a state law going into effect on Tuesday that targets employers who hire illegal immigrants.

"We have let some people go who we came to know were not properly documented. So in that respect the law is already doing what the framers expected," he said.

The maker of steel frames for buildings is among an estimated 150,000 businesses across the desert state preparing for the measure that places Arizona at the vanguard of more than 100 U.S. states and municipalities taking on immigration enforcement.

The law, passed days after a federal immigration overhaul died in the U.S. Senate in June, punishes first-time violators who knowingly hire undocumented workers with a 10-day suspension of their business licenses.

A second offense means they lose it.

The measure also requires employers to use an online federal database, dubbed "E-Verify," to check the employment eligibility of new hires in the border state, which is home to an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants.

Many employers like Bailey say they are pruning their workforce of illegal immigrants to avoid prosecution, or have outsourced some operations to neighboring states and even over the border to Mexico.

Other businesses have put a freeze on expansion in Arizona out of fear they will face prosecution should they inadvertently hire an illegal immigrant.

"It is too much of a risk for us," said Jason LeVecke, a franchise owner who operates a chain of 57 Carl's Jr. hamburger restaurants in the state.

He plans to expand in Texas.

BUSINESS 'DEATH PENALTY'

Immigration is the subject of a rancorous debate in the United States, where an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants live and work in the shadows.

The topic comes up frequently among Republican and Democratic hopefuls fighting to be their party's candidate in the November 2008 presidential election.

The politicians must tread a fine line between appeasing anti-immigration sentiment and trying not to anger Hispanics, who make up the fastest-growing voter bloc in the nation.

Many Arizonans support the new law. They say it takes away the lure of jobs for illegal immigrants and clamps down on employers unfairly profiting from cheap migrant labor.

"The only people who should be nervous are employers who hire illegals at cheap rates to gain unfair advantage over their competitors. They should be worrying a lot," said John Kavanagh, a Republican state lawmaker who co-sponsored the bill.

Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, signed the measure into law despite voicing concern that it was a business "death penalty."

A coalition of business groups filed suit to block the measure, arguing that it will be harmful to local businesses. A U.S. District Court threw out the challenge earlier this month, but a new suit has since been filed.

Lawyers opposed to the employer sanctions law say that it is unconstitutional and is open to abuse by people making malicious anonymous complaints. They warn that it will also make Arizona less competitive nationally.

"(Already) we have had businesses shut down, businesses that will not go ahead with acquisitions. It is going to get worse before it gets better," said Julie Pace, one of the lawyers bringing the employers' suit.

"Arizona will get bypassed economically. We will be known as tough but stupid from an economic perspective," she said
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNew ... =0&sp=true

"(Already) we have had businesses shut down, businesses that will not go ahead with acquisitions. It is going to get worse before it gets better," said Julie Pace, one of the lawyers bringing the employers' suit.

When you don't play by the rules, you pay.

The U.S. economy is not going to collapse without illegal aliens. This rhetoric is just a ploy to hide the real issue: businesses want cheap labor and fat profits, and they don't want to play by the rules.

Well, at least Arizona anyway, the jig is up. It might sting for awhile, but pay an American citizen a fair and respectable wage, and there will be no shortage of labor.

Published: 12.31.2007

Illegal immigration has high cost

Opinion by State Rep. John Kavanagh

With their legal challenges to Arizona's new Employer Sanction's Law foundering, opponents of penalizing businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants are shifting to phase two of their attack — a propaganda campaign designed to fool the people into believing that the law will destroy Arizona's economy. It won't.
Illegal immigrants are a drain on Arizona's economy. They burden taxpayers with costs of about $1.3 billion per year, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and that estimate only includes expenditures for education, emergency medical care and incarceration. The $1.3 billion estimate does not include the bill for other benefits, law enforcement costs and the expense of providing benefits to the children of illegals born here who, as citizens, are entitled to full government services, including welfare and costly government-sponsored health insurance.
Illegal immigrants harm Arizona's economy in other ways. By working for lower wages, illegals lower market wages and take good jobs away from legal residents. Because hospitals cannot recoup all of the uncompensated costs of treating illegals, they pass the costs on to legal residents and their insurance companies.
Illegal immigrants also degrade our state in non-economic ways. Our national parks near the Mexican border have been environmentally scarred by the unauthorized roads and trails illegals create and the trash they leave behind, as they illegally enter our country. In some areas of Douglas, residents are so fearful of transient illegals that they do not go out alone at night. In Phoenix, illegal day laborers and their supporters are disrupting a community and attempting to destroy a neighborhood family business that dared speak out against the harm, fear and disorder that loitering and trespassing illegal day laborers cause.
Illegal immigrants also make our communities unsafe. Illegals make up 8 percent of Arizona's population but comprise over 12 percent of the felons incarcerated in our prisons, according to the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Supporters of illegal immigrant labor claim that illegals give back to the economy by the taxes they pay. However, because many illegals work "off the books" and pay no taxes or work "on the books" at near-minimum wage rates that do not trigger income tax collection, illegal immigrants contribute little in taxes.
The claim that the exodus of illegal immigrants would harm Arizona's economy is also based upon the false premise that our workforce is currently operating at 100 percent efficiency and that the loss of a fraction of it could not be partially made up by the increased productivity of existing workers and automation.
We must stop illegal immigration now and Arizona is doing that by denying jobs and benefits to illegals. If the federal government would do its job by securing the border and providing businesses with carefully screened guest workers to fill the jobs that legal workers cannot fill, we just might be able to solve the divisive and costly problem of illegal immigration.

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/218269

Can't wait for the enforcement to begin!

If this works, other states and municipalities will jump onboard with a quickness.