/www.azcentral.com/business/articles/0611biz-sanctions0611.html

Groups applaud migrant bill veto
Businesses wait for what's next

Mary Jo Pitzl
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 11, 2006 12:00 AM

If many business groups have their way, Gov. Janet Napolitano's veto last week of the immigration bill will be the final word on the controversial issue for this year.

Several of them applauded the governor for vetoing the measure, which she called "a weak and ineffective illegal immigration bill that offers complete amnesty to employers."

Others worried that her strident tone will propel the issue onto the November ballot, a move that many employers fear could heighten their queasiness about enacting new state penalties for hiring undocumented workers.


Although they are content to let the veto be the last word for now on immigration, business groups disagree with Napolitano's view that the sanctions were hollow and meaningless.

"We never warmed up to the sanctions in the bill," said Farrell Quinlan, vice president of communications and federal relations for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "We weren't encouraging the governor to sign this bill."

Representatives lobbied against early versions of an Arizona employer-sanctions bill, but resigned themselves to some sort of punishment when lawmakers bundled the immigration issues into one package.

Most business groups say that little will be lost if the Legislature simply leaves the issue of employer sanctions alone for the short term and returns in January to tackle the issue anew.

Some point to moves by Congress to actually do something to crack down on illegal immigration as an encouraging sign.

"The Congress is seemingly moving in the right direction to clean up the mess they created in Washington," Quinlan said. The chamber has long advocated that immigration issues are federal responsibilities.

In southern Arizona, organizations from three of the state's border counties cheered Napolitano's veto.

"I think she did the right thing," said John Dougherty, spokesman for the Southern Arizona Chamber of Commerce Alliance, which represents business groups in Pima, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties. "We want to see federal action."

To the ballot?
Business groups also urged lawmakers to reconsider their threats to put the vetoed immigration package on the ballot, something they could do with a simple majority vote.

Anything approved by voters is difficult to change once it becomes law, said Todd Sanders of the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. So if problems were to arise with any aspect of employer sanctions, businesses could be stuck with an untenable law, he said.

The Phoenix chamber, which was neutral on the Legislature's employer sanctions, fears the veto could make a bad situation worse by boosting the chances of a statewide immigration vote.

It's unclear what lawmakers will do.

Some, such as state Rep. Russell Pearce, the Mesa Republican who has been the force behind state immigration legislation, are pushing to send it to the ballot.

Others, echoing concerns about the difficulty of changing voter-approved laws, say the issue should stay at the statehouse and be dealt with yet this year or next year.

Rep. Bill Konopnicki, a Safford Republican who also owns several radio stations and fast-food restaurants, says it makes sense to see what develops in D.C. "We're a week away from a $1.9 billion appropriation," Konopnicki said of a pending congressional vote on an immigration package.

He and other moderate Republicans had numerous problems with the overall immigration package, including some of its employer-sanctions provisions.

For example, it would have created a two-tier enforcement system that businesses would have had to follow (federal and state) and contained no provision to drop the state sanctions if the feds enacted tougher penalties.

Still others think the vetoed bill was a pretty good deal and should be revived.

"My feeling is instead of going to the ballot, we should change the governor," said state Sen. Barbara Leff, R-Paradise Valley.

Despite her ambivalence about the ballot, Leff has signed on to a Senate measure that would put an immigration package before voters this fall, without any employer sanctions.

Leff said the complicated nature of employer sanctions likely means changes would be needed in future years, and a voter-approved law would be too difficult to change.



Lawmakers also have to deal with Napolitano's demand to send her an immigration package that contains "real sanctions against illegal hiring."

Most Republican lawmakers say the immigration bill was as tough as they could get on illegal hiring without running afoul of a federal law that prohibits the states from layering on another level of criminal and civil fines.

The bill called for businesses to have their licenses suspended or revoked if they ignored a state-issued "cease and desist" order if they were found to have illegal workers on board. If the company followed the law and fired the employee, such penalties would not loom.

However, the bill did contain fines if an employer were found to have ignored existing employment law, such as filling out the federal I-9 form for hires. Those fines would have ranged from $2,000 to business-license revocation, which would effectively shut a business down.

Governor's wishes
Napolitano is giving few specifics of what she wants in terms of tougher employer sanctions. Clearly, she doesn't like a clause that indemnified employers if they fired an employee in response to a state cease-and-desist order.

"More can be done that what they have done," she said of lawmakers.

She pointed to an executive order she signed last fall that requires all state agencies to follow federal hiring practices to verify immigration status, as well as requiring state contractors to vouch that they have followed those procedures. The vetoed bill encouraged employers to use a federal verification system for new hires but stopped short of requiring it.