Council keeps illegal alien law for now
By Dave Munday (Contact)
The Post and Courier
Saturday, November 29, 2008


SUMMERVILLE — Dorchester County will keep in place for now its program to penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

A proposal to quit enforcing the county's Lawful Employment Ordinance was up for final approval last week. The logic behind the move was that the county no longer needed to worry about auditing businesses for illegal immigrants because the state is taking over the job.

The state program, which is under development, is part of the South Carolina Illegal Immigration Reform Act, which the General Assembly passed this year.

The problem is that the state won't start checking businesses for compliance until at least July, and it's not even clear how much effort the state can put into it then, council was reminded before the vote last week.

"The loophole created by the ordinance under consideration tonight should be obvious," Dorchester County Taxpayers Association Chairman John Braund said in a letter to council on Nov. 17 .

"We need more enforcement, not less," Summerville resident Ron Turner told council.

Several other residents also spoke against the change. Council agreed to keep the program in place at least until the state can handle the job and put it into a committee for more study.

"Why kill this now after going to all the trouble to implement it?" Councilman Richard Rosebrock asked.

Dorchester County started its program in July. When somebody complains that a business is using illegal immigrants, an auditor checks papers against a federal database. Employers that use illegal workers would lose their business licenses.

The county has received five complaints since the program started, but nobody has lost a license as a result, County Administrator Jason Ward said this week.

The county hired an additional codes-enforcement officer to handle complaints, but he also spends time on other duties, he said.

The state is supposed to start handling complaints of illegal workers in July for businesses with more than 100 workers and July 2010 for smaller businesses.

The S.C. Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation is working on an outline of the new enforcement program to present to the Legislature in January, Communications Director Jim Knight said. It's not yet clear how extensive the program would be, how many auditors would be needed to carry it out, or how much money lawmakers will allocate for it, he said.

Reach Dave Munday at 745-5862 or dmunday@postandcourier.com.
http://www.charleston.net/news/2008/nov ... _now63420/