US immigration law under fire

By Phy • July 7th, 2008

The New York Times wrote in its headlines today, “Employers Fight Tough Measure on Immigration.” It’s about a law passed in 2007 that provides for license revocation of businesses caught twice with illegal immigrants. Its enactment led to about 5,000 arrests in workplaces in 2007 alone. A large circle of employers nationwide have reacted negatively to the law and therefore moved to have it amended for their benefit. In fact, in Arizona last week, an employer group presented “more than 284,000 signatures — far more than needed — for a November ballot initiative that would make the 2007 law even friendlier to employers,” according to the news.

There seems to be two main concerns.

A lot of employers in the US (no number given in the article) hire immigrants who provide cheaper labor and the enforcement of the law would probably mean some of the businesses would go bust, resulting in not only illegal immigrants but also the US workers losing their jobs.

A $20 million business assembling electronic parts in Los Angeles has been notified that 20 of their workers who was hired 10 years ago had mismatches of their identity documents. “If we have to terminate 20 people, that’s going to jeopardize 100 other jobs of people who are legal, Americans, people who are making a good living,” the chief executive of the company told The New York Times.

When it comes down to replacement of them if they finally are found to be illegal immigrants, she insisted that she could not. Although the company has offered competitive wages of $9-$17 per hour, it has failed many times already in its attempt to attract non-immigrants for two main reasons: tight tech labor market and arduous and dull nature of the work, she said.

Another concern is the so-called “E-Verify” using federal database by which employers across the US is under the law required to use to check immigration status of new hires. “Business groups nationwide oppose mandatory use of the system, which is now voluntary, because they say the Social Security Administration database it draws upon is full or errors, which could lead to job denials of American citizens and legal immigrants and bureaucratic overload of the agency,” the newspaper reported.