Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) has cosponsored Chairman Lamar Smith's Legal Workforce Act (H.R.2885) that would require 100% of businesses to use E-Verify within two years. The bill also requires all federal, state, and local governments to E-Verify their entire workforce.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday, charging that South Carolina's new immigration law is unconstitutional. The law requires law enforcement to check the immigration status of all people that they detain, including those that are stopped for traffic violations. The ACLU and its allies are hoping to get a federal injunction to prevent it from taking effect. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson stood behind the law, saying, "We have a strong opinion this law is constitutional and we’re prepared to defend it to the U.S. Supreme Court if we have to.”
The federal government asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday to halt the Alabama immigration law. A federal judge earlier upheld two key provisions in the law that allow authorities to question people suspected of being in the country illegally and hold them without bond, and let officials check the immigration status of students in public schools. The measure has already had an immediate impact.
Employers in Alabama's Marshall County are hiring new workers following the stepped-up federal and state enforcement of immigration laws. "It is amazing to see the effects" as illegal workers leave town, said Chuck Ellis, a member of Albertville’s city council. In Alabama’s Marshall County, "three in four [locals] endorse the fact that there’s something being done" by the federal and state governments. "Self-deportation is a real thing," Ellis said.
An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit filed last week accuses a South Georgia farmer of discriminating against U.S. and black workers because of their race and national origin while giving better treatment to workers from Mexico. The suit alleges that the firm in 2009 let go the bulk of its U.S. workers but kept nearly all of its 370 workers from Mexico. The next year, lawyers say the company terminated the majority of its 233 U.S. workers, but it kept the vast majority of its 518 workers from Mexico.