Atlanta Business Chronicle

Lawmakers may toughen state’s immigration laws

by Dave Williams
November 4, 2010

Georgia lawmakers are expected to take another crack at the thorny problem of illegal immigration this winter, five years after passing the nation’s toughest law against hiring undocumented workers.

Other states have upped the ante since 2006, when the General Assembly acted to require Georgia businesses seeking government contracts to make sure their employees were in the U.S. legally.

Legislative leaders will be looking for ways to catch up with their peers when the 2011 session convenes in January, likely through some combination of tightening existing Georgia laws or piggybacking on other states’ laws.

Georgia and other states have become more active on illegal immigration in recent years, citing a need to act because Congress has failed to address the issue.

“The way we’re going to get the federal government involved is for the states to come up with legislation on their own,” said state Sen. Jack Murphy, R-Cumming, co-chairman of a special joint committee formed by House and Senate leaders this fall to tackle immigration reform.

The anti-illegal immigration agenda the committee recommends to the full General Assembly could include legislation to:

Ban illegal students from attending public colleges and universities.
Require all businesses to use the federal E-Verify system to ensure that their employees are in the U.S. legally.
Impose penalties on government agencies that are not using E-Verify to determine the immigration status of employees or the SAVE system to ensure that applicants for certain public benefits are U.S. citizens.
Adopt an “Arizona-style” law giving police the authority to question people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.

Illegal students attending public colleges and universities became a hot topic last spring with the discovery that a student brought to the U.S. illegally by her parents was attending Kennesaw State University at the in-state tuition rate.

The University System of Georgia Board of Regents adopted a policy last month prohibiting illegal immigrants from enrolling in any institution that has rejected academically qualified applicants for the past two years because of space.

But such a policy doesn’t go far enough, Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers told Murphy’s committee Oct. 28. Rogers, R-Woodstock, said it’s a waste of public funds to subsidize illegal immigrants’ college educations because employers can’t legally hire them.

“Public education is the use of taxpayer dollars to invest in individuals,” he said.

“If a person isn’t eligible for a job, why on Earth would the taxpayers invest in that person’s education?”

Rogers led the push for the 2006 law but said “holes” discovered in the measure in subsequent years warrant making some changes.

A bill introduced in the House of Representatives last winter called for extending the E-Verify requirement to all Georgia businesses, not just those seeking government contracts.

D.A. King, president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, an organization that opposes illegal immigration, said requiring every business to verify the immigration status of prospective hires would prevent illegal immigrants from taking jobs that otherwise would go to citizens.

“Illegal immigration is about jobs, jobs, jobs,” he said. “If we’re serious about protecting jobs, driving out illegal labor will go a long way toward doing that.”

Jay Ruby, a lawyer with the labor and employment law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart P.C., said business clients in states that have a universal E-Verify requirement have reported no significant problems complying with the law.

But Ruby said Georgia industries that rely heavily on undocumented workers could feel the effects of a universal E-Verify mandate.

Bryan Tolar, spokesman for the Georgia Agribusiness Council, said the requirement would be burdensome on farmers who employ temporary workers.

“We already have laws that say when you hire someone, [certain] documents have to be presented,” he said. “If [a prospective worker] present documents that look legitimate, I should be able to hire them.”

Along with businesses, government agencies in Georgia are required to use E-Verify and SAVE, another Web-based verification system that screens applicants for public benefits.

But government agencies have been slow to comply, prompting some lawmakers to suggest imposing penalties, perhaps through denial of state aid.

Clint Mueller, legislative director for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia, said counties have improved their compliance rate to 97 percent for E-Verify and 74 percent for SAVE. He said further progress by the end of the year could help blunt the case for penalties.

Some legislators also have vowed to follow Arizona’s example with a law that empowers police officers who stop someone suspected of committing a crime to then question their immigration status.

Charles Kuck, managing partner with Kuck Immigration Partners LLC of Atlanta, said Georgia lawmakers should await the outcome of a federal lawsuit challenging the Arizona law before acting.

“It’s clearly a political move to address a problem the states can’t solve,” he said. “We’re going to end up with 50 state laws and it will be impossible to do business in America.”

But King said the federal government’s refusal to enforce immigration laws has created a void that states can fill effectively.

“The law clearly gives us at the state level the ability to go after employers through licensing,” he said. “Even the threat of enforcement at the state or local level will cause illegal labor to migrate out of the area.”

Reach Williams at davewilliams@bizjournals.co m

Read more: Lawmakers may toughen state’s immigration laws | Atlanta Business Chronicle HERE

Note from D.A. King:

Bolton’s order did not affect several other provisions of the Arizona law which are now on the books.
These include:

— Creating a separate state crime making it illegal to transport or harbor an illegal immigrant.
— Making it a crime to stop a vehicle in traffic to hire a day laborer or for someone looking for work to get into a stopped vehicle.
— Requiring state officials to work with the federal government regarding illegal immigrants.
— Allowing Arizona residents to file suit against any agency, official, city or county for adopting policies that restrict the ability of workers to enforce federal immigration law “to less than the full extent permitted by federal law