Firms hiring illegals face hard sanction

WASHINGTON, May 26 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-3 Thursday states have the power to revoke the operating licenses of businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens.

The 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act makes it unlawful for a person or business "to hire or to recruit or refer for a fee for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien."

Employers who violate the law may be subject to both civil and criminal sanctions.

Paradoxically, the law also restricts a state's ability to combat on its own employment of unauthorized workers -- as opposed to using federal law. But the federal law does require employers to take steps to verify a potential employee's eligibility.

In order to help the states fulfill the requirement, Congress created E-Verify, an Internet-based system that employers can use to check the status of potential employees.

Several states, including Arizona, recently enacted laws to impose sanctions for hiring illegal aliens -- among the sanctions in Arizona, revoking or suspending business licenses.

A coalition of various business and civil rights groups led by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States filed a "pre-enforcement" challenge to Arizona's law. The group argued since the federal law pre-empted state action, E-Verfiy also was pre-empted.

But a federal judge ruled the plain language of the IRCA did not invalidate Arizona's law because the state law did no more than impose licensing conditions on businesses operating in the state, and Congress had made the E-Verify program voluntary for the states.

A federal appeals court upheld the judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts. "Arizona's licensing law falls well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the states and therefore is not expressly pre-empted," the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts said.

Justice Elena Kagan, who before this term was U.S. solicitor general, took no part in the case.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said: "Arizona calls its state statute a 'licensing law,' and the statute uses the word 'licensing.' But the statute strays beyond the bounds of the federal licensing exception, for it defines 'license' to include articles of incorporation and partnership certificates, indeed virtually every state-law authorization for any firm, corporation or partnership to do business in the state."