So here we are, with legislative sessions winding up. The National Conference of State Legislators released a report last week that pretty much stated that immigration laws are the new black: more than 1,100 bills have been considered in 44 states.
Most of them fail. So far, 26 state have enacted 44 laws on the issue, according to the report. This includes Mississippi’s Employment Protection Act.
But as we get closer to sine die, the final week of the various bodies legislative, we’re beginning to see things heat up. In Arizona, the state Senate has passed a bill that gives the business community a little more control over the Legal Arizona Workers Act last year (and, if passed and signed by the governor, would head off a harder-line citizens’ initiative). In Rhode Island, a mandatory E-Verify bill had its vote pushed back to next week (last month, the governor signed a resolution that all state agencies and private companies doing business with the state had to use E-Verify; Utah passed a similar law earlier this spring). And in South Carolina, a bruising legislative battle over use of E-Verify is coming to a head.
None of this is surprising, of course. The NCSL counts 179 of the 1,106 immigration-related bills as dealing with the topic of “employment.”
As critical mass builds, it will be interesting to watch which direction the energy moves. The Arizona bill passed last year and being revised this year was unfriendly to employers but didn’t really penalize illegal workers. The Mississippi law is somewhat unfriendly to employers and would throw illegal workers in prison for up to five years. The question on our minds is this: Will the energy in these bills go towards penalizing the employers, or penalizing the employees?
Tags: arizona, e-verify, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina
