Five years after it took effect and more than year after it was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, an Arizona law requiring that businesses check the citizenship of every new hire is often disregarded and rarely enforced.
The Legal Arizona Workers Act mandates that every business in the state verify the legal status of new employees against the federal E-Verify database and it lets the state strip licenses of businesses that knowingly hire undocumented workers.
But the Department of Homeland Security reported that Arizona businesses used the database just 982,593 times in 2011, even though the Census Bureau said there were 1.5 million new hires in the state that year, a 66 percent compliance rate.
Fewer than half of Arizona businesses – 43 percent – had enrolled in the system by this month, according to Homeland Security enrollment figures and Census Bureau statistics on the number of Arizona businesses. That rate falls to 19 percent for businesses with four or fewer employees, or less than one business in five.