After a series of battles over whether cities can pass their own immigration laws, a much bigger fight is looming between Illinois and the federal government over confirming residency status.
On Monday, the office of the US Attorney’s for Central Illinois filed suit over an amendment to the state’s Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act. This dealt specifically with the government’s E-Verify system, an online system that allows subscribing businesses to verify the employment and immigration status of all job applicants. Currently, the US government informs employers about employee eligibility in 93% of cases in a day: however, Illinois lawmakers have said the information is incomplete and can often take over a week to get to them. Their legislation demands that the system give responses to 99% of all inquiries within three days, and until then Illinois employers cannot use it.
The Illinois law, like other attempts to create local exceptions to federal immigration law, will face a tough battle. The court system has tended to rigorously enforce the constitutional concept of pre-emption, which gives the feds final say on matters like immigration. However, most local immigration law debates in recent months have been over whether cities and municipalities have violated the pre-emption clause by creating their own, stricter ordinances – like when Dallas suburb Farmers Branch tried to pass an ordinance turning landlords and employers into de facto immigration officers. This may be the first significant recent case where local government is being sued for a bill advocating non-compliance.
This article appears in September 21 • 2007.
