By now you have all heard about the passage of Arizona Senate Bill 1070, the controversial immigration bill that makes it a crime to be in the state without proof of citizenship or legal immigrant status, but have you thought about what it means for you as an employer? Even if your organization does not employ individuals in Arizona or have employees who travel to or through Arizona, chances are the new legislation will impact your organization in one way or another – in fact, many states, including Georgia, are discussing the possibility of passing similar legislation. According to the most recent polls, the overwhelming majority of Arizonans support the law and a significant majority of Americans in other states also agree with them. Like the law or not, you have to take action to prevent it from impacting your business. The following is a quick synopsis of some of the more controversial provisions and how these provisions can impact you and your business.

Perhaps the most controversial provision of the new law is the provision that grants law enforcement personnel the power to check the immigration status of anyone they have legally stopped or detained. If this law were to take effect in Georgia or if you send employees to Arizona, your employees could be detained if they are unable to reasonably demonstrate that they are in the U.S. legally.  Therefore, it would be wise to advise employees to always carry identification to demonstrate their immigration status. The Arizona law itself provides that the following documentation can serve as proof of legal presence in the United States: (i) A valid Arizona driver’s license or non-operating identification license; (ii) Tribal identification; or (iii) Any government-issued identification that requires proof of legal presence in the United States before issuance. As such, it’s safe to assume that if Georgia passed a similar law, it too will follow suit and would accept similar forms of identification as sufficient to demonstrate their immigration status.

Further, the law makes it illegal for an undocumented alien to apply for work or to perform work as an employee or independent contractor anywhere in the state of Arizona. You may be asking – how does this affect me since it’s illegal for them to work in the U.S. anyways? While you may be technically correct, the truth of the matter is that the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (“ICE”) is too overburdened, understaffed, and underfunded to have wide spread enforcement of these laws and will typically only targets bigger employers who are habitual violators. If the Law would take effect in Georgia, however, these provisions would empower local law enforcement to enforce these work-related immigration provisions thereby increasing the frequency of prosecutions and shrinking the supply of qualified workers.  In fact, the new law has a provision that targets the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Penalties include a license suspension for a first offense and revocation for the second.

The new law also makes it a crime for an occupant of a motor vehicle “that is stopped on the street, roadway or highway, to attempt to hire or hire and pick up passengers for work at a different location” if the vehicle blocks or impedes the normal flow of traffic. Even though the law does not differentiate between documented or undocumented workers, it is clear that this provision is aimed at prohibiting the hiring of day laborers who congregate at certain locations, such as home-improvement stores (e.g., Home Depot).  Like it or not, the truth is that many of us rely on day laborers to keep the cost of routine maintenance and repair costs down.  By eliminating a commonly known centralized location for skilled workers to market their services, the costs of routine maintenance and repairs will likely go up – even if it’s only a slight increase, with the uncertain economy any additional expenses or costs dramatically hurts our bottom line.

The new law also adds a more burdensome recordkeeping provision that requires employers to maintain E-Verify verifications for each employee for the duration of the employment or at least three years, whichever is longer.  If Georgia were to pass a similar law, it would be imperative for employers to review and, if necessary, modify their record-retention policies to ensure they will be complying with the law’s new recordkeeping requirement. Employers should also review their Form I-9 procedures to ensure full compliance with federal immigration law.  An employer that complies in good faith with the federal I-9 requirements is entitled to an affirmative defense. Obviously, this provision will increase the administrative burden and costs for businesses who want to comply with the law, but the failure to comply may be even more costly.

It’s becoming quite clear that the impact of Arizona’s immigration law is being felt beyond its state lines. Although the Obama Administration, along with many civil rights and legal groups, is earnestly fighting the enforcement of the new law, there is no guarantee that the Administration will succeed or how long it will take. Regardless of the outcome, many of the ramifications from the new law will be with us for quite some time. Therefore, it is imperative that we prepare for what’s to come. The good news is that you can avoid all of these confusing and burdensome issues by planning ahead. Contact an Atlanta business law attorney for advice on how these issues will affect them.

Tags: arizona immigration, business, business law, immigration

This entry was posted on Friday, July 23rd, 2010 at 10:35 am and is filed under Commercial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.