On the immigration front, cont.

I wrote two days ago about the 9th Circuit Appeals Court ruling on Arizona's immigration law. The part of Arizona's law which had been challenged were the sections dealing with non-compliant employers, those sections intended to remove the incentive for employers to hire illegal (mostly) Mexican labor, and thereby remove the employment incentive for illegals to stay in Arizona. As with Oklahoma's law, as I said in the other post, these sections of the Arizona law are vital to the final achievement of the Bill's intent.

However, it occured to me later that what I'd read in the article about Arizona's law concerning employers of illegal aliens actually made Arizona's law tougher, quite a bit tougher as a matter of fact, than Oklahoma's law when it comes to employer sanctions. According to the article, which is linked in the other post, Arizona employers who are caught violating the law can lose their business licenses. Whereas, as I've explained before, Oklahoma's law does not go that far. In fact, according to the provisions in Oklahoma's law, employers are only required to verify the employment status of their employees if they wish to enter into contract with government organizations. Otherwise, Oklahoma employers are left free to hire illegal aliens, though they remain subject to surprise factory and jobsite raids by local, state, or federal authorities.

So the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Arizona's much tougher restrictions on employers while the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has thus far refused to do so with Oklahoma's comparatively weak employer sanctions -- sections seven and nine of the bill respectively -- saying that Oklahoma's provisions probably violate federal law and are therefore probably unconstitutional. That's pretty interesting, don't ya think?

Well, as I said in the other post, the Ninth Circuit's ruling gives me some hope that Oklahoma's provisions will eventually be upheld in the Tenth Circuit. Additionally, the author of Oklahoma's bill, Rep. Randy Terrill, has stated before that Oklahoma would like to expand on the law, and as I recall (though I could be wrong) part of Terrill's plan involves toughening up our employer sanctions once we've gotten over the initial legal hurdles we're facing at the moment. Hopefully the recent ruling on Arizona's law will help us achieve that as well. I for one am completely and utterly unsympathetic towards employers who would commit treason against their countrymen in this fashion, and fully support the introduction of stricter penalties against such non-compliant businesses and business owners. (Some of you may think the term "treason" is a bit harsh. I don't.)