Arizona Does Not Enforce Existing State Law on Employer Verification of Illegal Immigrants

While Arizona, and other states continue to try to pass state laws that allow local police officers to enforce federal law, the government already has provided a way for employers to verify the citizenship of their employees.

Employee verification is important because it is an already existing way for states to enforce immigration laws without infringing on federal sovereignty.

Jahna Berry of the Arizona Republic has the full story on E-Verify the Department of Homeland Security's employer verification system HERE.

The story notes that businesses in Arizona are already required to utilize E-Verify:

Companies have opportunities to make sure they aren't hiring illegal immigrants.

Prospective hires must show proper identification, and they must submit U.S. government-required paperwork. Under Arizona law, new hires must be vetted by E-Verify, a federal system designed to catch illegal-immigrant workers.

But there are many ways for unauthorized workers to slip through the cracks.

E-Verify is designed to simplify the process of identifying immigrant workers who are in the country illegally:

The Legal Arizona Workers Act, which took effect Jan. 1, 2008, aimed to help close some of those loopholes.

The state law requires that all Arizona employers use the federal government's E-Verify system to check new hires.

It takes seconds to check a new hire's immigration status on E-Verify, a secure electronic database that combines information from several federal agencies. If E-Verify cannot immediately verify that the new hire is eligible to work in the United States, the worker can choose to dispute that finding and has eight business days to appeal with federal officials.

The Arizona law also includes tough penalties for people who knowingly hire illegal workers, including the loss of their business license.

However local businesses for the most part do not utilize E-Verify:

An Arizona Republic analysis of E-Verify figures found that about one-third of the state's estimated 100,000 employers have signed up for the E-Verify program. And the most recent federal hiring data suggests that many new Arizona hires aren't being checked by E-Verify.

Arizona employers made 732,455 E-Verify checks from Oct. 1, 2008, to Sept. 30, 2009. During that same period, Arizona companies made 1.3 million hires, according to U.S. Census figures.

The article notes that going after employers, would have a substantial effect on stopping immigrants from coming to Arizona, because the main draw for immigrants is the lure of higher paying jobs.

Perhaps, Arizona state officials should make existing federal and state laws, which would actually stop immigrants from coming into the country, work before making local officers enforce federal laws.