For this week’s Guest Post Friday here at Musings, we welcome back a good friend and fellow construction attorney, Scott Wolfe Jr. Scott is a construction attorney who practices law through his firm Wolfe Law Group in California, Washington, Oregon and Louisiana. He is also the founder of Zlien, a nationwide preliminary notice and mechanic’s lien filing service. He is the author of blogs Construction Law Monitor and the Construction Lien Blog.
The Landscape of New Immigration Laws in the United States
Now that that Arizona law has been deemed Constitutional by the United States Supreme Court, its effects are spreading like wildfire.
The “Legal Arizona Workers Act” allows law enforcement officers to detain anyone who is stopped for a lawful reason if the officer suspects the person to be an illegal immigrant. The law further allows Arizona to shut down businesses that hire illegal workers.
The Arizona law is significant not only for its novelty but also because it has now spawned the birth of similar immigration bills that are arguably even stricter.
On September 1, 2011, a new Alabama immigration law tougher than Arizona’s measure will take effect. An article on pbs.org offers a great explanation, stating: “It goes even further than the Arizona law by introducing new rules for…businesses…[and] makes it a crime to hire illegal immigrants “
Other states like Georgia and Louisiana, are starting to pass similar immigration laws that can have a negative effect on small to mid-size construction companies. In April, Louisiana introduced a bill similar to that of Arizona’s, being less strict that Alabama’s, and in May, Georgia did the same. Similar legislation is pending in Utah, Colorado, and Florida.
A lot of the controversy with these immigration laws is that they require the use of “E–Verify” to electronically verify if a particular worker’s social security number matches their name. We’re all used to the old I-9 form, and the E-Verify system is essentially the I-9 made electronic.
