Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Louisiana has passed two bills aimed at discouraging businesses from hiring undocumented workers, with significant potential penalties for employers.
By David Jacobs
In April, Arizona enacted a tough anti-illegal immigration law, making the failure to carry documents that prove legal status a crime and giving police broad authority to detain people they suspect are in this country illegally.
A law passed in Alabama, temporarily blocked in August by a federal judge, contains harsh penalties for businesses that hire illegal workers, including the permanent revocation of licenses and permits.
Louisiana legislators passed two bills in the past session aimed at discouraging businesses from hiring undocumented workers. While neither grabbed headlines the way the Arizona and Alabama laws did, the bills contain significant potential penalties for employers.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Louisiana has passed two bills aimed at discouraging businesses from hiring undocumented workers, with significant potential penalties for employers.
By David Jacobs
In April, Arizona enacted a tough anti-illegal immigration law, making the failure to carry documents that prove legal status a crime and giving police broad authority to detain people they suspect are in this country illegally.
A law passed in Alabama, temporarily blocked in August by a federal judge, contains harsh penalties for businesses that hire illegal workers, including the permanent revocation of licenses and permits.
Louisiana legislators passed two bills in the past session aimed at discouraging businesses from hiring undocumented workers. While neither grabbed headlines the way the Arizona and Alabama laws did, the bills contain significant potential penalties for employers.
Act 402, authored by Rep. Kirk Talbot, a River Ridge Republican, and Sen. Elbert Guillory, an Opelousas Democrat, applies to all Louisiana employers. Act 376, authored by Rep. John Bel Edwards, an Amite Democrat, applies only to businesses seeking to work with the state. The latter law requires any contractor or subcontractor bidding on any public job to sign a sworn affidavit attesting that they've used the federal E-Verify system to ensure all of their Louisiana employees are legal.
"If we can't agree on anything else [about immigration issues]," Edwards says, "we should be able to agree that taxpayer dollars should not go to pay the wages of illegal workers."
The issue gains urgency in a tough economy, he says, when so many citizens are unemployed. Louisiana might not host as many migrant workers as border states, but Edwards mentions the 18 undocumented workers taken into custody in March from the North Oaks Livingston Parish Medical Complex building site in Satsuma to demonstrate that Louisiana has a real problem.
E-Verify is a Web-based, voluntary, free federal system by which employers can check if new hires are allowed to work in this country legally. It's intended to be used after someone has agreed to take a job, and only after that person has completed the standard Form I-9.
The federal government explicitly says E-Verify is intended to be used for new hires, not existing employees. The Louisiana law seems to conflict with federal rules by requiring online verification of all employees. Edwards admits he was unaware of that limiting provision in the federal rules when he supported the state act.
"We can't comply with the state law, because federal rules prohibit us from E-Verifying current employees," says Ken Naquin, CEO of Louisiana Associated General Contractors, an industry group.
Contractors who run afoul of the state law can be thrown off the job and forced to pay the state the difference between their bid and the second-lowest bidder, and can even be banned from doing business with the state for three years.
"Quite honestly, we can do a lot worse things on a job than not E-Verify," Naquin says. "We might be fined by the state government or the federal government, but we don't lose the contract."
Jerry "Jay" Stovall Jr., an attorney with Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson and legislative director for the Greater Baton Rouge Society of Human Resource Managers, says the bills sailed through the Legislature.
"For construction guys, for large contractors with the state, they've got a very deep downside under [Act] 376," he says. "That causes you some heartburn."
Just think if local contractors like The Lemoine Co., or Baton Rouge-based powerhouses like The Shaw Group or Turner Industries lost the right to do business with the state.
"It's not likely," Stovall says, "but it could happen."
Naquin says he met with Gov. Bobby Jindal's staff to see if the governor could issue an executive order delaying enforcement of Act 376, scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1, until the Legislature could clarify the language next year. He was told the governor could only do so in an emergency.
So Naquin and the LAGC turned to the courts. They're asking for a declaratory judgment as to whether public contractors can comply with the state law without violating federal law. If the answer is no, they want the court to suspend the law until the next legislative session. The lawsuit was filed in state district court in Baton Rouge on Oct. 11.
Naquin says Act 402, which applies to every company in the state, appears to comply with federal requirements. Employers can be fined $500 for a first violation, $1,000 for a second and $2,500 for a third, per illegal alien employed.
Ed Hardin, a labor and employment attorney with Kean Miller, says Act 402, which went into effect Aug. 15, doesn't create significant new requirements for employers since it already was against the law to hire people who are in the country illegally.
Instead, Act 402 seeks to encourage employers to use E-Verify. Hardin recommends employers use E-Verify for new hires and continue to follow the Form I-9 procedure, though he adds the caveat that the state law allows the use of a smaller range of identification documents than does federal I-9 law.
Under 402, a U.S. birth certificate or certified birth card, naturalization certificate, certificate of citizenship, alien registration card or U.S. immigration form I-94 with an "employment authorized" stamp must be presented.
"E-Verify isn't necessarily a magic bullet," Hardin says.
The system has been known to spit out false positives, which might be why the feds have been wary of making the system mandatory for everyone. But under the new state laws, an employer who uses E-Verify is presumed to have acted in good faith and isn't responsible for any glitches in the system.
Hardin and Stovall say the state laws probably could use some clarification. Stovall says the HR director of a major local construction company told him they plan to go ahead and E-Verify all employees.
Naquin says 21 states have passed E-Verify laws, but other states only apply those laws to new hires, thereby staying compatible with federal policy.
"This is what happens when Washington doesn't set policy and you're going state by state," Naquin says. "Where is Washington on this?"
On Sept. 21, U.S. House Republicans pushed through the Judiciary Committee a measure that would require all businesses to use E-Verify. According to The Washington Times, Democrats fighting the bill accused Republicans of offering "amnesty" to some illegal immigrant farmworkers; Republicans, typically champions of states' rights, defended their bill, which would override existing state laws.
The newspaper says the partisan divide makes it unlikely any bill will clear Congress in the near future.
A version of this story first appeared in Baton Rouge's Business Report.
What is E-Verify?
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information from an employee's Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.
Why E-Verify?
People come to the U.S. illegally to work. The public can, and should, choose to reward companies that follow the law and employ a legal workforce. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is working to stop unauthorized employment. By using E-Verify to determine the employment eligibility of their employees, companies become part of the solution in addressing this problem. Employment eligibility verification is good business, and it's the law.
Who uses E-Verify?
More than 288,000 employers, large and small, across the U.S. use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of their employees, with about 1,200 new businesses signing up each week. While participation in E-Verify is voluntary for most businesses, some companies may be required by state law or federal regulation to use E-Verify. For example, most employers in Arizona and Mississippi are required to use E-Verify. E-Verify is also mandatory for employers with federal contracts or subcontracts that contain the Federal Acquisition E-Verify clause.
Source: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
Where are the U.S.'s illegal immigrants living?
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the U.S. in March 2009, a number that declined by about a million since 2007. Estimates by the center, released in late 2010, show that the annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. was nearly two-thirds smaller from March 2007 to March 2009 than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005. Although they are more geographically dispersed than in the past, most live in California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and New Jersey. The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants come from Mexico and other Latin American countries and are more likely than legal immigrants or U.S.-born residents to be in their 20s and 30s.
State/Unauthorized Immigrants
California/2.55 million
Texas/1.6 million
Florida/675,000
New York/650,000
New Jersey/475,000
Illinois/525,000
Georgia/425,000
Arizona/375,000
North Carolina/275,000
Louisiana/65,000
U.S. total: 11.1 million