Business owner questions validity of employer sanction

Local business owners are apprehensive of the immigration bill that passed State Legislature last week, which, if enacted, would shut down businesses caught knowingly hiring illegal immigrants more than once.

Gov. Janet Napolitano will decide the fate of the controversial bill on Monday. If passed, it would be one of the strictest immigration laws in the U.S.

Immigration reform is a hot topic this week, not only in Arizona, but throughout the nation. The president’s proposed bill to legalize thousands of illegal immigrants—while toughening up on issues like border security and illegals in the work force—was shut down Thursday by the Senate.

In a reaction to the Senate loss, Napolitano spoke of the “lack of action from the federal government and the desperate need for reform.”

But if the state bill meets a different fate this Monday, amidst the celebration, expect to hear an equally thunderous outcry from many of Arizona’s large-business owners.

Nan Walden, along with her husband Richard, is the head of Farmers Investment Co., a company that operates over 4,000 acres of pecan orchards and employs 240 workers, many of them Hispanic. Walden says the company follows the federal guidelines to verify its employees’ citizenship.

Walden, an attorney, thinks the bill is poorly written and potentially harmful to law-abiding employers.

“Of course, everyone is opposed to people hiring illegal immigrants to work in sweat shops and things like that, but this is the extreme. There should be a safe harbor for the employer who’s doing the right thing and abiding by the law,” Walden said.

The severity of the recriminations a business could suffer under such accusations might encourage unscrupulous practices toward rival businesses, Walden says. Competitors could use the law to falsely incriminate their rivals, suddenly revealing “knowledge” of a worker who might be undocumented.

Walden feels that the penalties are harsh and unethical. First-time offenders would get their business license suspended for three years, second-time offenders would lose their licenses, permits and certificates.

“Businesses with large numbers of employees have various levels of the hiring process, and the entire company could get shut down because of the mistake of one person. Which isn’t fair to the hundreds of people who will lose their jobs,” she said.

She says that businesses end up hiring illegal immigrants in the first place due in part to laws that protect the immigrant and hurt the employer.

“You can’t ask potential employees whether or not they’re U.S. citizens. It’s discrimination under the Civil Rights Act, and they can sue you,” Walden said.

Walden is opposed to the perceived hypocrisy of the Arizona bill in conjunction with the national act. “That just boggles the mind.”

She goes on to say that the proposed bill would have “the damaging effect of making employers across the country wary of hiring Hispanic people.”

Walden also takes issue with the ambiguous and malleable definition of the bill’s key word—knowingly.

Walden wonders what counts as a “knowing” illegal hire.

“If a competing business makes an accusation that you’ve hired an illegal worker, and it turns out to be true, what if you retain the worker? Would the employer then be guilty of ‘knowingly’ hiring illegals, when the issue wasn’t present during the actual hiring process?”

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