Who Wins in Arizona, Employers or the State?

Arizona has been the focal point for everything from immigration to guns in the past year and on December 8^th another case will push this state back into the spotlight. This time it is in effect a fight for the rights of the individual business owner, against additional state control.

Since May 2009 the case has been through trial court and the Ninth Circuit court with the final result ending in the Supreme Court. According to the published opinion of the Ninth Circuit court, "Relying on a 1976 Supreme Court case called De Canas v. Bica,the Ninth Circuit found that while the federal government can decide who is allowed to enter and leave the country, each State can decide who is allowed to work inside it." The Chamber of Commerce appealed this decision to the United States Supreme Court by requesting, or petitioning for a writ of certiorari, which the Court granted, this appeal has resulted in a court date of December 8^th.

According to one Southern Arizona resident, Kaiser L. "The state law limits the freedom of employers, so it ought to be scrapped. However, I'd rather not see the use of any federal authority against the state of Arizona, because it continues the dangerous precedent of federal superiority. A particularly elegant solution would be for the federal government to disband that database entirely."

I have to say that I agree with his approach, after all why should employers be held accountable for federal or state legislation that is neither effective nor beneficial while being both costly and time consuming. Now this is not to say that the E- Verify program is not effective, it is however, extremely costly. According to the ACLU, "...found that the proposed legislation would cost taxpayers more than $40 billion over 10 years."

However, what it comes down to is the mandatory nature of the law being put into place in Arizona. This "law" would further restrict the rights and freedoms of the average business owner; it would by default create additional criminals and will end up costing the average citizen additional tax dollars. This is not too mentioning that the law is redundant in many ways as well. After all, it is already illegal to knowingly hire someone without a legal right to work in the United States, so why put additional confusing laws into place?

It comes down to political agenda's, after all, if these "leaders" in Arizona did not have new laws to pass, further confusing the small business owners and people of Arizona, they would no longer have a legitimate job. The best approach for an almost bankrupt state, enforce the laws already on the books regarding employee hires and illegal immigration, and stop wasting taxpayers money by issuing new directives and laws that are un-necessary.