New year brings tough new state immigration laws

While efforts to rewrite immigration law at the federal level failed last year, two state measures, Tennessee House Bill No. 729 and Arizona House Bill 2779, will have far-reaching repercussions for immigrants who want to work in the United States, as well as for the employers who want to hire them.

As of Jan. 1, 2008, employers who hire noneligible immigrants — noneligible could mean either legal or illegal immigrants, depending on their visa status — will have their business license revoked.

This, as you can imagine, is tougher than a mere fine. This would put a company not in compliance with the new laws in Tennessee and Arizona out of business.

According to Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer for Siskind Susser Bland, the question that remains open is whether or not a state or local government has the right to create its own immigration requirements beyond what the federal government requires.

“The Founding Fathers clearly gave Congress the sole authority to regulate immigration,” says Siskind in his VisaLaw newsletter.

Arizona and Tennessee businesses fought the legislation to no avail.

How deeply this will affect IT in those two states remains to be seen. The bill may be targeted at lower-paying restaurant, landscaping, and other jobs considered nonskilled positions, but it is a wide net that may catch any company, including those hiring IT professionals, not following the new laws.

There are lots of details employers need to be aware of, and it is probably a good idea to read Siskind’s newsletter, which offers 15 pages of details.

However, it is worth mentioning that employers using the new federal E-Verify system, which supposedly responds to the eligibility of a potential employee in about five seconds, isn’t always accurate.

There have been cases where a perfectly eligible employee was denied a job because the E-Verify system misidentified him or her.

The E-verify system compares Social Security number data and information in Department of Homeland Security immigration databases.

The Tennessee law says an employer by law must determine the immigration status of a non-U.S. citizen and failing to do so could revoke the business license.

Finally, Siskind warns that the current Tennessee law does not provide for an appeals process.

The Arizona law stipulates that a first-time employer/violator of the law — where an employer knowingly hired a worker ineligible for employment — must terminate employment, and the employer is subject to a three-year probation period, wherein the employer must file quarterly reports on all new hires to the county or state attorney.

There’s plenty more to chew on here, so do read the VisaLaw newsletter written by Greg Siskind.