Dasmah Accounting

Legal Arizona Workers Act

Posted on August 10, 2011

The U. S. Supreme Count ruled in upholding the Arizona law that punishes employers that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.  This blog in not going to debate the merit of the law but rather focus attention on the impact to employers and action they should be doing in order to follow the law.

The law was originally passed in 2007 and ever since that time our entire payroll clients have been using E-Verify to check the new employees.  We provide this service to them at no charge because it is not that difficult to do and does not require very much time.  The most important document is the I-9 and it is up to our clients to make sure that it is completed and the photo identification is actually the person that they are looking at. The other requirement that we have is that it is legible. This is critical in the spelling of their names. E-Verify matches the name you type in with what the Social Security Administration has on file. If there is no match then you will not receive compliance from E-Verify.  That is not to say that the way you typed in the name is wrong just it did not match SSA’s records.

The critics bring the problem of the accuracy of E-Verify and how employees will be harmed because of the inaccuracy. Our comment to that is that maybe this is a method of helping eliminating the errors, we really do not know.  What we do know is that if an employer uses E-Verify reduces or eliminates the punishment that the State of Arizona can impose.  This is why we have kept using E-Verify from when the law was first passed and will continue to use it.  Remember that if there is a problem it is not up to the employer to fix the problem it is up to the employee.

As mentioned at the beginning this is not to discuss the merits of the law but how employers can use E-Verify to help conform to the law avoiding in possible sanctions from the State of Arizona.  Those of you who do not live in Arizona it is our understanding that eight other states have enacted similar laws and that thirteen states filed briefs supporting Arizona.