Tucson Region
Employer sanctions law may be invoked for the first time
By Nick Martin
East Valley Tribune
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.16.2008
Enforcing Arizona's employer sanctions law is hard. So hard, in fact, that no prosecutor in the state has even tried to shut down a business for hiring illegal immigrants since the law took effect Jan. 1.
But in his first in-depth interview about the law since it took effect, Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said last week that the void may soon be gone.
His office is investigating as many as 10 Maricopa County businesses on suspicion of knowingly hiring undocumented workers, he said, and some of the cases may reach the courts by the end of the year.
The revelation came last week after the county raided three popular family water parks owned by a Mesa company and arrested nine employees on suspicion of fraud and immigration violations.
Thomas said the Mesa group, Golfland Entertainment Centers, is among the companies under investigation, but he declined to name the rest. Some of the other businesses are large, he said, and include restaurants, a construction firm and a janitorial company.
Word of the investigations also comes at about the same time as The Associated Press reported that authorities elsewhere in Arizona have looked closely at nearly four dozen such cases.
"The public is rightly demanding action in terms of what role employers play," Thomas said.
Some skeptical about law
The investigations arrive at a time when some have grown skeptical that business owners were being targeted at all.
Passed last year, the Legal Arizona Workers Act was meant to evaporate the job market for illegal immigrants by scaring businesses away from hiring them. If a company is caught knowingly hiring such workers, the state can suspend its business license or shut it down.
Advocates hoped the punishments would be enough to convince companies to hire legal, documented immigrants or U.S. citizens. But six months in, no punishments have taken place.
"It's interesting that it's taken this long for the county attorney's office to bring prosecution or enforcement down on a business," said Farrell Quinlan, a spokesman for Arizona Employers for Immigration Reform, a Valley group that has sued to block the law. "We thought it was going to move forward earlier."
A lot of Arizonans thought so, too.
Prosecutors face hurdles
As the Jan. 1 start date approached, there were accounts of immigrants leaving the state and businesses struggling to find employees. Business groups warned that the law could badly injure the state's economy by driving away investors who worried their money would be lost to prosecution.
One of the difficulties of prosecution, though, has been that the bar is set very high to shut down a business, Thomas said.
A prosecutor has to prove the employer knew he was hiring an illegal immigrant, and proving intent is tough to do, he said.
"We follow the evidence and see if what we have at the end of the day is an employer sanctions case," Thomas said. Despite hundreds of tips that have come in to county authorities, few have risen to that level, he said.
Another difficulty is that any violation of the law is a civil offense, not a criminal one. That means investigators don't have tools like subpoenas or search warrants at their disposal.
In some cases, Thomas said, investigators have been left only to walk in the front door of a business and simply start asking questions. If the business doesn't want to answer, they don't have to, he said.
"People obviously can assert their rights, and I'm not going to question that," said Thomas.
Still, Maricopa County's chief prosecutor said he would like to have "some subpoena power" to help investigate the cases. "The investigative tools provided by the employer sanctions law are very limited," he said.
That request worries some critics who say Thomas' office has been known to push the limits of the powers it has already.
"If there's one example of an abuse of power, it did come through their office," said Julie Pace, one of the lead attorneys in an ongoing federal suit to strike down the law.
She pointed to last year's investigation of Phoenix New Times newspaper, in which a subpoena by the county attorney's office ordered the newspaper to turn over records of the reading habits of everyone who visited its Web site during a certain period. The broad subpoena ended up killing the case and resulted in accusations of intimidation and abuse of power by Thomas' office.
Anonymous tips criticized
One of the lawmakers who sponsored the original sanctions bill, State Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Scottsdale, said, though, that he would be willing to provide more power if it would help enforce the law.
"If the message I get from prosecutors is that the law needs more prosecutorial tools, I'll give it to them," Kavanagh said.
He added: "The law is in its early stages and we'll see how it plays out."
Critics have also hit Thomas for his willingness to accept and investigate anonymous tips. Some argue that anonymity could lead to dirty tricks by competing businesses.
Thomas defended the practice last week, saying there should be no concern. "It's what you do with the anonymous tips" that matters, he said.
He also said his office gives "higher priority" to tips that come from people who willingly come forward, as well as those who give very specific information.






http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/border/243958