09/ 26/ 2007
Issue moves to states
With Congress' failure to pass comprehensive immigration reform, the battleground has moved into the states.
Several states are trying novel approaches to get around a 1986 federal immigration law that forbids states from punishing business owners with either fines or jail time for hiring illegal workers.
Based on two separate surveys, our members have strong opinions about immigration:
- Our borders need to be secured while expanding programs that allow legal guest workers.
- Employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers should be punished.
- We need a workable, reliable employee verification system.
Unlike national big-business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, we strongly oppose an amnesty program. Arizona, along with Colorado, Georgia and Oklahoma, now requires certain employers to verify their workers' legal status. Arizona is attempting to get around the 1986 law by penalizing a company caught twice knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. In that case, the company would lose its business license.
The other three states are requiring their contractors to confirm that their workers are legal. In addition, Oklahoma will allow citizens who get fired the right to sue their former employer if an illegal immigrant works for the company. That law applies to all companies in Oklahoma.
Another provision of Oklahoma's law cracks down on businesses that use contractors and subcontractors to avoidemployee verification rules. Under the law, companies must withhold Oklahoma state income tax out of payment to their contractors, unless the contractors can prove their workers are legal.
Each state also requires employers at a minimum to participate in the federal government's employee verification system, called the Basic Pilot Program (BPP). However, there are a number of problems with that system:
- The system produces false negatives that deny authorization to some U.S. citizens and other legal workers.
- It fails to prevent document- and identity-fraud employment, resulting in authorized but undocumented employment. Until fraud can be prevented, employer sanctions can't work.
- According to a conservative estimate, the Basic Pilot Program operates with a 20 percent error rate.
- The Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security systems aren't fully integrated, but the BPP uses both.
- Full-scale implementation of the BPP could cost around $12 billion a year.
In the meantime, a federal judge threw out a law passed by the city of Hazleton, Pa., that includes penalties for hiring or renting to illegal immigrants. The ruling could have a chilling effect on states and cities attempting to deal with immigration at that level. Arizona's law could be the next test case.
NFIB.com
For the latest information on the immigration debate, visit www.NFIB.com/issues.
