Here comes the rush for all the Arizona businesses to get in compliance with the new immigration law.  Many owners around the valley have been in a stall waiting to see if this new employer-sanctions law will hold up to the legal challenge. 

Azcental.com gives this summary of the new law, “Under Arizona’s new employer-sanctions law, all employers must begin using E-Verify by Jan. 1 to check the employment eligibility of new hires or risk having their business licenses suspended or revoked if caught knowingly hiring illegal workers.”   

Let’s let the numbers speak for themselves, “as of Nov. 21, only 4,733 of the more than 150,000 employers in Arizona had signed up for the program. Currently, only about 32,000 employers are using the program nationwide.” 

Many lawyers are advising their clients to wait until the last two weeks to sign up for the E-Verify program for two different reasons.  One reason for the wait is to see if the law holds up to the court challenges or if it gets delayed.  The second is to “test the system’s capacity and cast doubt on its effectiveness at a time when some lawmakers in Congress are pushing to expand E-Verify to all states.”