ATLANTA - Big companies wanting to do business with the state will have to start verifying their workers' immigration status under a new law set to take effect this summer.
As part of an illegal immigration crackdown Georgia legislators approved last year, contractors or subcontractors with 500 or more workers will be required to run new employees' information through a federal Department of Homeland Security database.
They will not be allowed to work on any government contracts without signing affidavits that they ran the verifications.
"We have found a tool to help Georgia employers comply with the law," said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, who pointed out that most identification checks take only a few seconds and should not be a burden on companies.
Rogers, who last year sponsored the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, known as Senate Bill 529, spoke Thursday at a state Labor Department public hearing. The department is responsible for enforcing the verifications starting July 1.
He pointed out that about 500 Georgia-based companies already are voluntarily enrolled in the federal government's checking system, which started in 1997 and was known as the Basic Pilot program before recently being renamed the Employment Eligibility Verification program.
Savannah-based Gulfstream Aerospace enrolled earlier this year with a deadline for the checking system to be in place by September, company spokesman Robert Baugniet said.
"In the interim, we are using the I-9 forms to verify employees' status," he said, referring to forms workers fill out to prove they can work in the country.
Many of the Georgia companies that have signed up to use the checking system have enrolled in the past couple of years as the debate over illegal immigrants has grown louder.
When lawmakers passed Senate Bill 529 last year, Georgia became the first in the country to adopt a statewide, comprehensive response to illegal immigration as federal reforms stalled in Congress.
Under Georgia's law, contractors and subcontractors working with state or local governments who do not comply with the status checks will be guilty of falsely swearing on their affidavits.
But Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond said there will not be an effective way to monitor whether employers are complying until lawmakers put money into some type of auditing system.
He estimates that it would cost the state $1.3 million to conduct 5,000 random audits a year, which would hit about 17 percent of the companies expected to be affected by the new law.
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