4/7/2008: Security News Brief: Arizona "Illegal Imigrant" law works:
Jobs drying up:

As it has become the favorite entry point for undocumented migrants
trying to sneak into the United States, Arizona has become a
laboratory for whether a state can single-handedly combat illegal
immigration.

In recent years it has barred illegal immigrants from receiving
government services, from winning punitive damages in lawsuits and
from posting bail for serious crimes. A new state law shuts down
businesses that hire illegal workers. And the sheriff of Maricopa
County, which includes Phoenix and three-fifths of the state's
population, dispatches his deputies and volunteer "posses" to search
for illegal street vendors or immigrants being smuggled through the
county.
"What I love about what Arizona is doing is we don't have to rely on
the federal government," said state Rep. Russell Pearce, a Mesa
Republican who has authored most of the toughest measures. "It has
truly woken up the rest of America that states can fix that problem."

The campaign has had an effect: Illegal immigrants complain it's
impossible to find good work and are leaving the state.

It has also taken a toll on some U.S. citizens.

Juan Carlos Ochoa, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in an upper-
middle-class subdivision near Phoenix named Laguna Hills, can't find a
job because a government database classifies him as a possible illegal
immigrant. Pauline Muñoz, a 39-year-old mother of six who was born in
Phoenix, has been afraid to leave her apartment since being held by
sheriff's deputies for 15 hours for a driving infraction -- an example
of what she believes is racial profiling.

And businesses that cater to immigrants both legal and illegal report
a huge drop in sales, increasing the drag on the state's already
troubled economy.

"There used to be so many people they would fight for parking out
there," said Omar Flores, 31, manager of La Mexicana market in western
Phoenix. Now the grocery store is mostly empty.

Economist Dawn McLaren of Arizona State University said that part of
what's pushing immigrants out is the collapse of the state's housing-
based economy. In the construction sector, which employs many
immigrants, 10%% of jobs have vanished over the last year as home
prices have plunged.

The economic woes are magnified by the employer sanctions law, which
has led some businesses to say they won't expand in Arizona, McLaren
said. "It exacerbates the downturn," she said.

No one knows how many immigrants have left the state, and the most
recent government figures show Arizona growing robustly -- as of July,
Maricopa was the fastest-growing county in the nation.

But enough immigrants have left that the government of Sonora, the
Mexican state bordering Arizona, has complained about how many people
have arrived on its doorstep.

Pearce says the overall effect has been undeniably positive for
Arizona. "Smaller class sizes, shorter emergency room waits," he said.
"Even if [illegal immigrants] are paying taxes -- and most of them
aren't -- the cost to taxpayers is huge."

The biggest effect has come from the new employer sanctions law, which
took effect in January.

The law is fairly straightforward.

Any business caught hiring illegal immigrants is put on probation. If
it is caught doing the same thing again, the state revokes its
business license.

The only defense for an employer is if it used E-Verify, a federal
pilot project to allow businesses to confirm the legality of their
laborers.

The law did what it was supposed to with Jorge Hernandez, a 32-year-
old illegal immigrant from Mexico. He had been working in a Phoenix
tire shop for years when in December his bosses told him they'd have
to let him go because of the new law. Now he struggles to support his
family by working as a day laborer and is thinking of leaving.

"I've been in Arizona for 11 years," he said. "This is the worst one.
For those years I worked every day. I had money, I had a car."

Hernandez dreams of moving to New Mexico, where friends have told him
the economy is stronger and sentiment against illegal immigrants
weaker. "They don't have E-Verify there," he said in Spanish.

E-Verify has at least one significant flaw -- its treatment of
naturalized U.S. citizens.

Between October 2006 and March 2007, about 3,200 foreign-born U.S.
citizens were initially improperly disqualified from working by E-
Verify. Their status was later corrected.

Because many did not register their citizenship with the Social
Security Administration, they are often listed as possible illegal
workers.

That's what apparently happened to Ochoa, 47, who became a citizen in
2000. He quit his job as a car salesman at the end of last year and
got hired by a local Dodge dealership in February. Days later, his new
employers called him with bad news -- E-Verify classified him as a
possible illegal immigrant. He only had a couple of days to convince
Social Security that he wasn't.

He had lost his naturalization certificate, so Ochoa took his U.S.
passport, Social Security card, driver's license and Arizona voter
identification card to the local Social Security office. He was told
he'd have to request new papers from the Department of Homeland
Security, which could take up to 10 months.

"I love this country, I'm happy in this country," said Ochoa, a father
of two, who escaped eviction this month only because a church group
paid his rent. "The guy who made this law, I don't know him. He's
started destroying a lot of families."

Katherine Lotspeich, acting chief of the agency that runs E-Verify,
said officials will introduce a number of changes, starting in May, to
make it easier to fix the problems that Ochoa and other naturalized
citizens have encountered.

"The last thing we want is to have people who are naturalized citizens
deal with this cumbersome process" to get paperwork, Lotspeich said.

She added that Social Security should have accepted Ochoa's passport
as proof of citizenship.

Local law enforcement efforts, meanwhile, have drawn complaints about
racial profiling.

For the last two years, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has been
testing how far a local law enforcement agency can go in combating
illegal immigration. His deputies and trained volunteers have detained
more than 1,000 illegal immigrants, many of whom were stopped for
minor infractions and then asked about their immigration status. State
legislators this month moved toward passing a law requiring all local
police departments to start fighting illegal immigration.

"I believe that if you get tough," Arpaio said, illegal immigrants
"will disappear."

Immigrant-rights groups and attorneys have complained that Arpaio's
attack on illegal immigrants leads to Latinos constantly being asked
about their citizenship status. Some cite Muñoz's case as an example
of perils to Arpaio's approach.

Muñoz was held for 15 hours after being stopped on a speeding
violation in Phoenix in December. Deputies discovered she did not have
a driver's license. She was placed in a van with several arrested
illegal immigrants, taken to jail and held for several hours of
processing before a judge released her.

"It's only because of the way you look," Muñoz said. "Even though I'm
from here, I don't feel safe to go out and do anything."

Sheriff's Capt. Paul Chagolla, a department spokesman, said Muñoz was
detained for driving without a license. She was kept with the illegal
immigrants because "when we run an operation we don't always have
transport" for individual suspects, he said.

Arpaio said that there have been few specific complaints of profiling
and that his deputies ask suspects about immigration status only when
they see a possible crime committed.

He has no apologies for his tactics or their contribution to a flight
of illegal immigrants from Arizona.

"The more who leave, the better," he said. "They shouldn't be here in
the first place."
Source: Morning Security News Brief via LA Times