Employers confused over new immigration law

Alabama employers must begin using the computerized federal E-Verify system in 2012 to document that their employees are legally in the country.But the key sponsor of Alabama’s recently passed illegal immigration bill said employers won’t have to use the system on current employees.

“It is only for new hires,” House Majority Leader Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, said Tuesday.

Gov. Robert Bentley signed the bill into law last week.

Since then, Hammon said people, including employers, have had a string of questions about how the new law will affect them.The law’s provisions for documenting legal status of employees include penalties for those who “knowingly” hire or retain illegal immigrant employees.Birmingham tax accountant Michael Yonosko said that wording has some employers rethinking their workforce since the law went into effect.

Yonosko said he’s been telling his clients they should be fine as long as they comply with current federal employee verification law. Federal law requires they verify Social Security numbers and either immigrant green cards, naturalization papers or a U.S. birth certificate.

Yonosko said some employers worry that the implications of Alabama’s law are terminating current employees out of fear they may not be in compliance.

“The key word is ‘knowingly,’ ” Yonosko said.

Hammon agreed.

“It was not our intention to place a burden on employers for something the federal government should be doing,” Hammon said.

Changes in the workplace should come through attrition and new hiring, not layoffs, he said.

Language in the Alabama law refers to sections of federal law on how employers should document employee status, one possible source of confusion, Hammon said.

“Right now, you have to hire someone and then use E-Verify, not the other way around,” he said. “That is something we’d like changed. If the federal law changes in the future, language in our law now allows us to change with it.”

Alabama employers face 2012 deadlines on when they must begin using a computerized federal E-Verify system. For employers with state, county or local government contracts in Alabama, the deadline is Jan. 1, 2012. For all other employers, the deadline is April 1, 2012.

Hammon and Republican Sen. Scott Beason, the law’s Senate sponsor, said they consulted on the wording of the bill with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Korbach, who wrote Arizona’s illegal immigration law. He also is past chairman of the Kansas Republican Party.

Sections of the Arizona law have been struck down by federal courts, but the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the section on E-Verify.

Korbach is a former law professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City Law School. He was affiliated with the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the organization as a “nativist hate group.”

The law center, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigration Law Center are among groups saying they plan to sue the state before the first non-employment provisions of the law take effect Sept. 1.