An Exercise in Discovering Unintended Consequences
From Washington Post, via this intro from the Nation’s Restaurant News:
“Editorial: Ariz. to serve as testing ground with strict immigration law
Arizona will begin enforcing one of the toughest state immigration laws in the U.S. in January. The new law suspends the business license of any company that knowingly hires illegal immigrants for up to 10 days. The license will be revoked upon a second offense”
There is little clarity about the law itself, which is being challenged in court by major business associations, Hispanic groups and the American Civil Liberties Union. The statute was sloppily drafted[.] While [Gov.] Napolitano believes the law applies only to workers hired after Jan. 1, Andrew Thomas, the Maricopa County (Phoenix) prosecutor whose purview includes most of the state’s population and workforce, says it applies to any employee on a firm’s payroll, regardless of hiring date.
[...]The system of verification that employers will be required to use to check workers’ status relies on a federal database whose error rate regarding non-native-born Americans is believed to be as high as 10 percent — and for which Congress has appropriated no funds beyond next year. All in all, a recipe for chaos and confusion.
