Friday, June 29, 2007
News

And so it begins...

Georgia’s new security and immigration law kicks in

Los Angeles Police chief Bill Bratton (second from right) greets immigrant reform supporters as they march in support of legalization for millions of undocumented immigrants. CREDIT: J. Emilio Flores/Getty Images

By Stephanie Ramage

Some Georgia employers will begin feeding newly hired employees’ social security numbers into a federal database this week to verify that they are in the United States legally. If they’re not, the law says, they have to be fired.

The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, with an enforcement date of July 1, requires that “public employers”—basically any government agency or organization funded with tax dollars—check the work eligibility of all their employees hired on or after July 1, 2007. Certain private contractors entering into contracts with these public employers will also be required to verify the work eligibility of new employees. The intent is to crack down on employment of illegal immigrants.

Michael Thurmond, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Labor, says that his office assisted in devising the guidelines of the legal status verification process required by the law, which passed in the 2006 legislative session. But normally, he says, the department does not concern itself with illegal immigration. Enforcement of immigration laws will continue to be handled by the federal government through the services of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The eligibility verification process, Thurmond says, requires employers to check the information produced by the federal electronic verification system, the Employment Eligibility Verification (EEV)/Basic Pilot Program, operated by the U. S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), against the information provided by the applicant.
“If someone is using someone else’s social security number, for example, it will show that,” Thurmond says.

This week, those public employers with more than 500 employees are required to begin verifying the status of new hires. The verification is not to be used to screen applicants for jobs—only employees who have actually been hired. It also cannot be used retroactively to verify legal status of employees who were hired prior to July 1. The
next phase of the law goes into effect July 1, 2008, when public employers, contractors and subcontractors with 100 or more workers will be required to begin checking the work eligibility of their new hires. Finally, on July 1, 2009, all contractors and subcontractors doing business with public employers will be subject to the new law.

Redundancy in the laws
Jerry Gonzalez, director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO), says the law replicates regulations that have long been in place under federal law. He also points out that the system has flaws: Immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and use a social security number that’s not their own, but give the information that matches the number, for example, will slip past the system. Many undocumented or illegal immigrants already use this method to secure employment, and by doing so, they become taxpayers, because taxes are deducted from their paychecks.

Based on a conservative estimate that about 50 percent of undocumented workers pay income taxes, the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute calculates that with an approximate undocumented immigrant population “of between 228,000 and 250,000, the aggregate sales, income, and property tax contribution could total between $215.6 million and $252.5 million for Georgia’s state and local coffers.”

With that in mind, Gonzalez questions the goals of the new law. “Here is the state, once again creating a lot of paperwork and a huge bureaucracy to essentially do the same thing the federal law already does,” he says. It has, however, had one effect already, he says: whipping up suspicion toward all immigrants and putting pressure on law enforcement officers to the extent that they arrest and detain perfectly legal citizens and visitors to this country.

Gonzales points to the case of Canadian grad student Cheryl Kuehn, who was stopped for speeding and failing to heed a stop sign in Brunswick, Ga., earlier this year. She was detained at the Glynn County Detention Center for 11 hours while officials checked whether she could legally be in the U.S. Officers at the facility told a Canadian newspaper that they had conducted the status verification as part of their preparations for the July 1 activation of the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act.

Closer to home, Gonzalez says immigrants from all kinds of countries who have a permanent resident card—what’s commonly called a “green card”—as well as full-on citizens who might be Hispanic, are running into trouble just getting their drivers’ licenses renewed.

“Depending on who you talk to at the DMV, they may or may not be qualified to look at documents and make a determination of status,” he says.

State Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock), who authored the immigration law, defends it on the same grounds that Gonzalez criticizes it: “It basically reinforces the federal law. All the state law is doing is mandating that we check for eligibility for employment and public benefits.”

Rogers says the verification system, which is administered by the federal DHS, shouldn’t create the time-consuming paperwork hassle its detractors claim it will. He says the system usually verifies status within about 20 seconds, and that there are options for those whose social security numbers might generate an inaccurate report. If the information doesn’t match, the employee can ask for secondary verification, which might entail staffers at DHS hand-pulling the person’s file.

“Once they’ve pulled the file, there is 100 percent accuracy,” says Rogers. But even American citizens whose personal information doesn’t match what the feds have on file may run into problems.

“Errors involve a female worker whose name has changed because she’s gotten married or there is a misspelling, most of the time,” he says, adding that secondary verification should fix such problems.

Aside from employment, the law will affect public benefits like Medicaid, but perhaps not to the extent that backers of the law might have thought. While it’s true that only legal residents of the United States are eligible for help from taxpayers to cover their medical bills, federal law already bars noncitizens from such benefits. Federal law also protects access to emergency treatment for everyone.

Among the few procedures that are affected by Georgia’s new law are organ transplants for adults, which are not considered emergency measures. For those, verification will be required.

However, verification is not required for benefits sought by minors, in-kind disaster relief, immunizations, testing or treatment for symptoms of communicable diseases, prenatal care or various other assistance “deemed by the U.S. Attorney General to be necessary for the protection of life and safety.”

And that’s just fine with Rogers, who is adamant that the law was never intended to block undocumented immigrants from critical medical care—only to block the use of public funding to pay for medical care for those who are not eligible. To make sure that only those in the U.S. legally can get taxpayer money to pay their medical bills, people applying for Medicaid or other benefits will be subject to status verification—their social security numbers will be entered into the Systematic Alien Verification of Entitlement (SAVE) program operated by the Georgia Department of Human Resources.

How day laborers are taking the news
Despite the looming deadline for the implementation of the new Georgia law, the mood among the corner day-worker crowd is surprisingly unconcerned.

“You have to understand that most of these guys on these corners are from the country in mostly Mexico and Guatemala,” says a 39-year-old man who identifies himself as A.J. “They can’t read and write in Spanish, much less English. They only keep up on the immigration laws thing from what little they hear other people are saying.”

Standing across the street from a Home Depot, A.J., who says he originally came to the U.S. from Nicaragua at the age of 10 under a provision for political asylum seekers, says he doubts the law will have much of an impact on rogue employers. But there is concern that the new level of risk employers will be courting will be used as a reason to drive down undocumented workers’ already low wages. A.J. says the pay for these unskilled, undocumented workers is pretty consistently $8 an hour.

The men aren’t at all worried.

“The employers coming to pick us up are fully aware they are getting falsified documents, if any,” says Freddy from Venezuela, who relies on A.J.’s translation. He adds, “they also know they’re getting great workers.”

Even as legislation is being considered on a national level, A.J. explains that these workers know there will always be some states that are more lenient in their application of the laws than others. So no one feels compelled to pack up and head for their home countries. Instead, they will simply move on to the next state.

“There’s a real need for us—we wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t,” he says. “The federal government doesn’t even want to get involved. They’re just making a lot of noise; putting a Band-Aid on a big sore. It is going to take years for them to come up with something solid.” SP

Interviews with day laborers were conducted by freelance writer Nanette Massey.