South Carolina lawmakers compromise on illegal immigration bill

The House and Senate have finally reached an agreement on an illegal immigration reform bill, and Governor Mark Sanford has indicated he will sign it into law. The Senate has given its final approval to the deal, so it now goes to the House, which is expected to go along.

State Sen. Jim Ritchie, R-Spartanburg, has been pushing the bill for years and has been working on the compromise.

"It means that all people who are competing in the workforce for jobs will be on a level playing field, that no one will have a competitive advantage by breaking the law," he says. "It means that South Carolina taxpayers will no longer have to have a $186 million hit to their budget."

He says that's the estimate of how much it costs state taxpayers to provide health care and other benefits to illegal immigrants, along with their cost to our schools and jails. This bill bars illegal immigrants from receiving any public assistance and from attending public colleges and universities.

There was opposition to the bill. Back in February, when lawmakers were starting their debate, the Latino Association of Charleston gathered at the Statehouse to try to fight the bill. Association president Diana Salazar said lawmakers were not taking into account the children born in this country of illegal immigrants. Even though the parents are illegal, the children are U.S. citizens because they were born here.

"What are we going to do once those parents are taken out of the state of South Carolina? What are we going to do with their American children? Is DSS going to take care of that? Are we Americans (going to) have to fork out the bill?" she said.

The House and Senate have been fighting for months over the bill. The final sticking point was how businesses would verify whether their workers are here legally. The House wanted businesses to use as an option E-Verify, a federal system for checking workers’ status online. But the Senate wanted to create a new state version of a form similar to the federal I-9 form. Senators have now agreed with using E-Verify.

The bill will create a 24-hour telephone hotline and website to report illegal immigrants. It will require all employers to verify their employees’ status by making sure they have a valid South Carolina driver’s license, a license from another state that has the same eligibility requirements as South Carolina, or through the E-Verify system.

Employers with 500 or more workers will have to start complying by January 1, 2009. Those with between 100 and 500 employees will have to comply by July 1, 2009. Smaller businesses will have to comply by January 1, 2010.

The bill also will allow a lawsuit against any company that fires a legal worker for the purpose of hiring an illegal one.

Ritchie says it's the strongest bill in the nation, and says Arizona, which already requires employers to verify their workers' status, has seen illegal immigrants move out of the state on their own because they know they'll be caught.

"We've also seen in Arizona that the unemployment rate has actually dropped because the folks that are legally in Arizona are now getting jobs," he says.