I have been a long-time believer that the US should address the demand side of illegal immigration and punish businesses that hire illegals (ex: every chicken processing plant in the US). Immigrants overwhelmingly enter illegally for jobs. I would think that *reducing the demand *for illegal labor is a lot easier than patrolling thousands of miles of borders to reduce the supply.
This makes no sense. Punishing businesses that hire illegals is a great idea. But Arizona laws are always stupid ideas. Something is wrong here.
This was a simple question of interpretation.
Congress said states can’t impose civil penalties, but can regulate licensing regarding employment of illegal aliens.
Is the revocation of a business’s authorization to exist under state law a civil penalty or a regulation of licensing? Whatever the correct answer is, the question just isn’t that interesting. IMHO, congress did not intend this result, but they wrote a badly worded statute.
Emphasis added. That’s not much of an argument.
It doesn’t take much when we’re talking about Arizona.
That’s not much of an argument either.
I generally support this administration’s goals, but not this time. I don’t see why they felt the need to challenge this law.
I am comfortable with broad state control over business licensing as long as it is neutral ideologically and with respect to civil rights. I also believe that requiring use of E-Verify is kosher unless the federal government is going to claim that the E-Verify system is biased. Unless we have reason to believe that enforcement will be biased?
I am also more optimistic about the efficacy of employer-targeted laws. Tighter enforcement on individuals at most deports them back to where they started. Tighter enforcement on businesses forces a choice between low-price labor and low-risk labor.
Immigration is a federal issue. Licensing businesses is (generally) a state issue. A state deciding that “don’t hire people who violate federal law X if you want to be licensed here” doesn’t really entangle the two in a Constitutionally dubious manner.
It’s only not constitutionally dubious to the extent Congress expressly allowed it. Otherwise, having states interpret and enforce federal law raises all kinds of problems. The penalty for violating a law is carefully calibrated to balance various concerns – if the penalty is too harsh, you might get unintended consequences. So it can be a real problem to have states tacking on penalties for federal laws.
“Illegal” is not a noun.
No problem here with the ruling.
The “show me your papers, boy” law is the one I’m worried about.
Yeah, they seem to be challenging the law point by point. I agree wtih this point. The others, not so much.
This is the beauty of the Arizona law in a nut shell. The law does not create conflict with the federal system. From CNN:
I think the bigger story here is the 3 Justices that voted against AZ.
I can in no way think of a conceivable reason it should not be supported 100%, so I fail to understand Breyer, Ginsburg and Sotomayor which doesn’t really surprise me…
From my HR/employer stand point, I can call bull sh*t on that line of thought. We’ve been utilizing e-verify for a long time, as should all employers IMHO.
I’m pretty much all for it and am especially interested in what effects it has on business and agriculture.
Why shouldn’t it be? English is not Latin. It is a living and flexible langauge. Impact can be used as both a noun and a verb; raven can be a noun, verb, or adjective; out can be noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition.
The use of illegal to me “a non-citizen resident in a given country without governmental permission” isn’t even especially new. Merriam-Webster has it going back to 1939.
Postville raid - Wikipedia It is not a small scale transgression by a few companies. Some companies have encouraged illegals to come to their plants for work. Often they confiscate the workers papers and then they own them. They can not go elsewhere if they get abused or cheated.
I haven’t followed the Arizona Vs Illegal immigrant saga at all. I hope this doesn’t constitute a hijack of this thread, but does Arizona have a plan i place to enforce this law? Does Arizona have the personnel and/or funding? Or will the Federal government be required to participate?