Nebraska bill targets hiring of illegal immigrants

March 14th, 2008 by Brad Economy, Immigration, Social Issues, State of Nebraska

Saying illegal immigrants come to Nebraska for jobs, State Sen. Gwen Howard introduced a bill Wednesday that would deny Nebraska business tax incentives to companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants.  Howard said that she has been considering the bill for months and that it is not intended as a counterpoint to Gov. Dave Heineman’s call to crack down on illegal immigration by tightening the verification process to deny state benefits to anyone who isn’t a legal U.S. resident. 

Nebraska may be one of the first states to try to tie a prohibition on hiring illegal immigrants to its economic development incentives, said Greg LeRoy, executive director of Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., information clearinghouse on economic development practices.  This isn’t the first time Nebraska lawmakers have seen a proposal that would link incentives and immigration.  In 2003, while considering an update of the state’s business tax incentive program, Nebraska lawmakers considered a provision that would have denied tax incentives to companies that habitually violated labor, immigration or environmental laws. 

That proposal proved to be a sticking point, however, and the legislation failed.  The state’s main tax incentive law wasn’t updated until 2005, when the Nebraska Advantage Act was passed without the provision.  Ron Sedlacek, legal counsel for the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said Howard’s bill appears to be an improvement over the 2003 proposal, although he said it might have unintended consequences. 

The 2003 proposal did not require a “knowing” violation, Sedlacek said, leaving employers vulnerable to sanctions if they unwittingly hired someone who gave them false documents.  In addition, federal anti-discrimination law restricts the amount of questioning employers can do of a job applicants’ documents, and businesses still lack a reliable means to verify an applicant’s identification papers, Sedlacek said.  The governor’s spokesperson, Jen Rae Hein, said Howard’s bill raises some of the same questions Heineman discussed in unveiling his proposal last week. “The governor is in favor of sanctioning employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, but this issue needs to be addressed at the federal level,” Hein said.

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