State illegal immigrant hiring law won’t work

Nevada is told federal role preempts effort to fine employers

Sat, Mar 22, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Business frets over new rules on illegals (8-10-2007)
LV industries worry flow of immigrants will dry up (6-07-2007)

Nevada Department of Taxation

An almost 6-month-old state law that calls for fining businesses employing illegal immigrants can’t be enforced, an official said Friday.

The reason: The state attorney general’s office says immigration is an issue for the federal government, not states. The law, AB 383, mostly focuses on combatting the trafficking of immigrants, but includes a provision for the Taxation Department to fine employers whom the federal government has proved were knowingly hiring undocumented workers.

The law took effect Oct. 1. Dino DiCianno, executive director of the Taxation Department, wrote the state attorney general Sept. 6, asking whether federal law preempted the provision. On March 3, Senior Deputy Attorney General Karen Dickerson replied that federal immigration law “expressly preempts state and local laws which impose criminal or civil sanctions on employers who hire illegal immigrants, except through licensing and similar laws.”

The result: “The letter of the law (AB 383) as written cannot be carried out,” DiCianno said.

“I don’t know where this leaves us now,” he added.

Peter Ashman, a local immigration attorney and former chairman of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Nevada chapter, called the attorney general’s opinion “the right decision.”

Enforcing immigration laws should be left to federal immigration officials, he said, adding that the measure, a first for Nevada, “reflects the frustration of state and local governments nationwide ... as they’re trying to fill a gap.”

The provision’s story mirrors those of thousands of ordinances and laws on immigration nationwide: Constituents voice concerns about immigration and lawmakers move legislation forward with relatively little opposition, only to have an attorney general or outside lawsuits strike down the laws.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 1,562 state bills on immigration were introduced in 2007 and 240 became law. Laws in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma have faced high-profile legal challenges.

Arizona is a notable exception. Its law allowing the state to take away the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers recently survived a challenge in federal court.

David Thronson, a founder of the immigration law clinic at UNLV’s Boyd School of Law, said, “There is great political will to pass these bills regardless of whether they’ll take effect.” His students helped draft the part of AB 383 addressing immigrant trafficking.

“Whether they’re enforceable or not, these laws speak to issues that motivate voters,” Thronson said.

The bill’s sponsor, Assemblywoman Marilyn Kirkpatrick, D-North Las Vegas, said AB 383 was “very important” to her and her constituents. She pointed to another provision that ordered the Business and Industry Department to post a link on its Web site to E-Verify, the federal government’s tool for verifying the Social Security numbers of workers.

“Our philosophy was there’s got to be tools to verify Social Security numbers, and there’s got to be ramifications,” she said.

Kirkpatrick said she wouldn’t comment further until she saw the attorney general’s opinion.

For now, the ramifications or consequences of hiring illegal immigrants will be left to the federal government.

DiCianno said he would still forward any complaints about undocumented workers to the state attorney general. He intends to speak with the Legislative Counsel Bureau to determine what the next steps will be.

“Until I have that conversation, I’m not going to move forward. We need to do what’s legally defensible and appropriate,” he said.

Assemblyman Moises Denis, D-Las Vegas, one of three Hispanics in the Legislature, said he supported the bill, which passed unanimously in the House and Senate, because he thought the “provisions for trafficking were useful.” He said he wasn’t sure at the time whether the provision aimed at employers would work and he intends to look more closely at such provisions in the future.

“In any case,” Denis added, “I have thought all along that the true solution to the problem lies in comprehensive immigration reform by the federal government.”

Discussion: 8 comments so far…

By Richard

3/22/08 at 5:57 p.m.

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It is ludicrous to argue that enforcement of laws in this area is limited to the Federal government. Increasingly, states and localities have enacted provisions to deal with areas where failure to deal with issues encompassed within the umbrella of "illegal immigration" for political reasons has left a void. It is not surprising that vested interests have launched a rainbow of legal objections to prevent enforcement of such provisions, once they are enacted by legitimate state and local entities. There are a huge number of peripheral issues involved that clearly involve violation of existing state and local laws, let alone new ones. Forgery, fradulent representation, perjury, just to name a few. Unfortunately it seems our AG has opted for the easy way out to avoid dealing with a burgeoning but controversial issue in our state.
By jfnance32

3/23/08 at 12:04 a.m.

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If it is only the Feds that can enforce immigration laws then we should demand that the Federal government hire hundreds of thousands of Federal police officers to live in all the cities of the US to enforce the immigration laws.
By mike911

3/23/08 at 2:46 a.m.

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dont you people watch LOU DOBBS topics like this are discussed everynight on his show
By rbrirbri

3/23/08 at 3:04 a.m.

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The Attorney General's Opinion is absurd on its face.

A Federal Court recently said that Arizona can suspend a business license for 10 days, or even revoke it. But, despite this, the Nevada Attorney General says that Nevada can't issue a mere fine. The Attorney General's logic is nonsense.

She is just a puppet for the Casinos. If the Casinos tell her to say that it is snowing, then she will say that it is snowing, even in July, and even if it is 110 degrees.
By Brittanicus

3/23/08 at 11:30 a.m.

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Although Nevada is not fully supporting its enacted immigration legislation, it still has made some effort. Other states such as Arizona, Georgia and Oklahoma have also listened to its taxpayers. However the globalist, open border, free traders have been silently implanted in our government and their main agenda is the free movement of cheap labor throughout the North American continent. The European Union is a good example of this, where indigenous peoples have been outsourced by mass foreign national cheap labor.

We can stop the travesty of our immigration laws, if only the majority of Democrats would co-sign the SAVE ACT. With only 18 more votes to go, we could bring this enforcement only bill to a vote. However, the Democrats want to attaches an addendum to the bill. It would give the 12 to 20 million foreign nationals occupying our nation, an easy ride to legality. This is wrong when millions wait for years patiently, to get THE PEOPLES permission to get a entry visa.

The SAVE ACT is a by-partisan law is awaiting just 18 signers, to bring this enforcement only to a House vote. The SAVE ACT will supersede any state laws, in its magnitude. It will go after the real culprits who are the predator employers. It is enforcement by Attrition or Self-Deportation. Cannot get work, then they will leave of their own accord.If you are one of the citizens fed up with subsiding the poor, uneducated from around the world. When the new personage steps into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, then we will be seeing the 12 to 20 million getting a path to citizenship. Nobody should have a right to legalization without going home and being processed like all immigrants.
YOU! And only YOU, can stop this travesty of our Immigration laws?

Tell your representatives to co-author THE SAVE ACT?
Congress is currently on recess through March 31st, so your representative will likely be in the home constituency and available to meet with its citizens.
FREE FAXES FOUND HERE. Keep calling your Congressmen today, toll free numbers include 1-877-851-6437 and 1-866-220-0044, or call toll 1-202-224-3121 AND REGISTER YOUR OUTRAGE at ongoing efforts to keep our country from enforcing its immigration laws!

http://capwiz.com
www.numbersusa.com
www.fairus.org
www.vdare.org
By olecapt

3/24/08 at 10:31 a.m.

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The 12 to 20 million are here to stay. Their removal is completely impractical. They are well embedded and have a few million American children.

That they would self deport is the redneck fairy tale. The outcome of tougher enforcement will simply drive the illegals from taxed payrolls to untaxed ones. Half are already on the untaxed side...if this idea worked why have they not gone home?
By AndiMedi

3/24/08 at 12:25 p.m.

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I agree with Olecapt. The anti-immigration guys are selling a fantasy. And the road to that fantasy is paved with unitended consequences. For example, the E-Verify program cited in the article is frought with errors. According to a new report from the Cato Institute, a free-market think-tank:

"Then we must consider the error rate in federal government databases. In December 2006, the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General estimated that the agency’s “Numident” file—the data against which Basic Pilot checks worker information—has an error rate of 4.1 percent. Every error resulted in Basic Pilot’s providing incorrect results. At that rate, 1 in every 25 new hires would receive a tentative nonconfirmation. At 55 million new hires each year, this rate produces about 11,000 tentative nonconfirmations per workday in the United States—a little more than 25 people per congressional district, each day of the working week, all year long."
By Niceguy

4/25/08 at 2:24 a.m.

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AndiMedi,
There is a simple solution. The 4 percent error is almost exclusively composed of new immigrants that didn't follow directions concerning their new SSN that they received after being sworn in. So until a better system is widely available the 4 percent that are in this category can be given a time frame (I'd be fine with anything under a year) to go to a SSA building and work it out. Worst case scenario, a business would have verified 96 percent of its workforce. That would be a huge improvement compared to the current system of circumventing immigration laws over the most minor difficulty or silliest technicality.

All Nevada citizens need to be wary of people like Karen Dickerson that are looking for excuses. If anyone has visited our schools or had to go to a hospital in Nevada then you know this should be a driving issue to determine who you will vote for.