What a difference a year makes.
Last year on the final day of the session, Rep. Russell Pearce found out the Senate wouldn’t be taking up legislation to punish employers who hired illegal immigrants. This year, both legislative chambers passed an employer sanctions measure hours before closing the book on the 2007 session.
“I don’t mind being fair, but there will be no amnesty for someone who hires an illegal alien,” Pearce, R-18, said.
The bill was approved by the House 47-11 and 20-4 by the Senate in June 20 votes and was sent to the governor for her consideration. If it becomes law, employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants will face a possible 10-day suspension of their business license on the first offense and will be required to give the county attorney quarterly updates on hirings for at least three years.
A second violation of the law will be a revocation of the business’ license.
Though it was approved by a wide margin in each chamber, there were still critics of not only the bill’s provisions, but also the politics behind its passage.
Rep. Steve Gallardo, D-13, said the measure was too punitive.
“I think employers need to be held accountable…but we need something that is fair and practical,” he said.
Others objected to what one lawmaker called “bully” tactics. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-15, said she didn’t think it was right for Pearce to use a push to get an even more strict sanctions program on the ballot in 2008 as leverage to force the Legislature to approve this bill.
“I think that legislation at gunpoint is not the right way to do business,” she said.
But Rep. Ray Barnes, R-7, said the bill’s opponents were being insincere, as many of them have in the past called for employer sanctions, often when the Legislature was debating other illegal-immigration-related measures.
“The same people who were fighting for this [in the past]…are the ones who are now arguing,” he said.
Pearce: Democrats are ‘hypocritical’
Pearce said his Democrat critics are “hypocritical and deceitful” when it comes to illegal immigration.
“These people have no intention [of supporting immigration reform],” he said. “They’re pro-amnesty, they’re pro-illegal-alien. They fight us on border security, they fight us on enforcing the law, they fight us on going after employers, they fight us after helping law enforcement enforce the law by giving them subsidies and grants.
“There is never a right answer to these people.”
The legislation underwent a facelift as it moved through the process. While it initially required all employers to sign an affidavit promising to not hire illegal immigrants and included large fines if a business broke that affidavit, that language was removed in the Senate.
Though Pearce was adamant about the language when the bill was debated in the House in March, he now says the final product will be better insulated from legal challenges because federal law prohibits states from imposing monetary fines on businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
“I thought we wrote it carefully and cleverly to avoid that, but you still might have a judge who throws it out because he considers it an end run, a wink and a nod, and it’s still a fine,” he said. “This is much safer, this is a better bill.”
Governor: ‘We’ll see what they send me’
Gov. Janet Napolitano said she’d take a look at the bill with “great interest,” but noted that last year she vetoed a similar bill because it provided amnesty to employers.
“You have to deal with the underlying labor issues and have a law that can be enforced on those who intentionally go around the law to hire labor illegally,” she said. “I think employers who intentionally avoid the law need to be paying sanctions and fines so we’ll see what they send me.”
Pearce says he is hopeful the governor will sign the bill so the Legislature can turn its efforts to taking restrictions off law enforcement agencies and encouraging the federal government to secure the border. If that happens, he says, the returns will be great.
“If we continue to move forward, I guarantee we’re going to turn around Arizona,” he said .