From the CNS News article:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that under the administration’s policy of exercising “prosecutorial discretion” in the enforcement of the immigration laws, her department is currently authorizing some illegal aliens to work in the United States.

via Napolitano: DHS Authorizing Illegal Aliens to Work in U.S. | CNSnews.com.

South Carolina’s House Judiciary Committee voted 15-7 on Tuesday to advance a bill that would require law enforcement to check the status of people they suspect of being in the country illegally during a stop or arrest for something else. Opponents argued that the measure would worsen racial profiling and flies in the face of American freedoms.

SC legislators OK anti-illegal immigration bill | DailyComet.com

The primary complaint from the business community, as exemplified by the comments of my friend from the Gwinnett Chamber, is that the E-Verify requirement will place an unreasonable burden on Georgia businesses as they struggle to emerge from the recession:

“We’re coming out of [a] recession, and businesses are doing all they can do right now to stay afloat,” said Jann Moore, senior director of public policy and education for the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce. “To turn around and put the responsibility of another policy on business is the wrong thing to do. The timing could not be worse.”

In truth, the fears are completely unjustified. First, the compromise reached on Thursday exempts smaller businesses for which, arguably, E-Verify would cause the greatest burden. As I will explain in a minute, even the smallest businesses can comply with the law with minimal hassle.

Second, businesses of any size can reduce the actual cost of compliance to a couple of minutes and less than $6 per new hire, a far cry from the $127 per new employee claimed by the business lobbyists.

In 2007, I founded Verify I-9 LLC, which is a Designated Agent of the E-Verify program. In short, we conduct verifications for our business clients. We have hundreds of clients from many states including Georgia.

Our average client employs fewer than four workers and hire no more than one or two new employees a year. But even for our larger clients, participation in E-Verify is essentially hassle-free.

Verify I-9 currently charges no setup fee and no monthly fee; in other words, it costs nothing to enroll in E-Verify. By using a Designated Agent (aka Employer Agent), the employer avoids the tutorials and mastery tests that are required before access to the system is granted. By hiring us, the employer saves three to six hours of labor cost on the front end.

E-Verify adds just a couple of minutes to the hiring process—the time that it takes to drop the I-9 form into a fax machine. We submit the information from the I-9 to E-Verify and return the response by email, usually within one business day. The employer writes a verification number on the I-9 form and files it away.

It really is as simple as that.

Our charge for this service is currently as low as $5.95, and no more than $9.90 per new hire. Employers that enroll directly can use the system for free.

Over 400,000 businesses are enrolled in E-Verify with over 1,000 new enrollees each week. Hundreds of Georgia businesses participate including Gwinnett-based E.R. Snell Construction, Cash Register & POS Systems Support, Next Step Electrical Services, Surig & Son Specialized Masonry, Drywall & Acoustic Contractors and Phillip Blount & Associates.

When you hear the business community, liberal politicians and pro-amnesty advocates foretelling the demise of Georgia’s economy, know that the complaints are unfounded and amount to nothing more than posturing to preserve the status quo.

What do you think? Do you support Georgia’s new E-Verify requirement? Would you be more likely to patronize a business that checks its new hires? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Georgia lawmakers pass illegal immigration crackdown  | ajc.com

Then why are you spending money to protect illegal aliens and the employers who hire them?

The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act went into effect in 2007. It required that all local governments use the E-Verify system to make sure that they were not hiring illegal workers and to use the federal SAVE system to verify that applicants for various public benefits including business licenses were eligible to receive them.

The law also mandated that employers providing products and services to the government– construction companies, landscape services, road builders, etc.– enroll in E-Verify to ensure that tax dollars are not paid to illegal workers.

Numerous groups lobbied against the law’s passage including the ACLU and GALEO, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. Two of the most influential lobbyists, the GMA and the ACCG, were able to weaken the bill to the point that there were no penalties for violations. Those groups have opposed every effort to strengthen the laws regulating the employers of illegal aliens including this session’s Senate Bill 3.

Who are the GMA and ACCG? Just two of the most powerful lobbying groups at the State Capitol; the lobbyists that you are funding to oppose tougher sanctions on governments and employers who violate Georgia’s immigration-related laws.

Most Georgia cities belong to the Georgia Municipal Association, an umbrella group that provides “tools and services” to aid local governments. Your county is a member of a comparable group with a similar purpose, the Association County Commissioners of Georgia. Both groups have a team of lobbyists pestering State Reps and Senators under the Gold Dome to amend and pass laws that benefit them or, at best, don’t restrict them too much.

The member cities and counties pay annual dues to the organizations; tens of thousands of dollars from each to fund the organizations’ activities. That money comes from you, the taxpayer, “the usual victims in illegal immigration” says D.A. King, the president of the Dustin Inman Society.

King asks, “Why does a bill designed to protect legal workers on public works contract have a thumbs down from GMA Inc.? Why did it take a 2006 Georgia law to make Georgia’s 535 municipalities begin using E-Verify? Why isn’t GMA/ACCG leading the way in protecting the American worker? Why aren’t all 535 municipalities and 159 counties still not using the federal SAVE program as required by the 2006 state law?”

Good questions… questions that you should be asking your City Council and your County Commission. While you’re at it, ask them why you are paying to fund a political effort that is diametrically opposed to your own position on illegal immigration.

Gwinnett County has no such policies. Sure, leaders crow about the county’s participation in 287(g) – a token, marginally cost-effective enforcement effort. Meanwhile, Mexican drug cartels and child prostitution rings use the county’s immigrant population as cover for their illicit activities.

The three-year, $385,000 study – released Tuesday by the university’s Center for Survey Research – also found that the county’s noncitizen Hispanic population, legal and illegal, dropped by 7,700 from 2006 to 2008, and that illegal immigrants accounted for 2,000 to 6,000 of that decline.

Attrition Works, Yet Again | Center for Immigration Studies