With the federal government stalled on national immigration reform, a handful of local governments around the country are enacting laws designed to discourage the hiring of illegal immigrants.

The city of Mission Viejo, Calif. is poised to become the latest city to try to crack down on illegal immigration. Council members on March 19 approved one of the nation’s first local ordinances that requires city contractors to check their workers’ immigration status with a government verification system.

The city will probably become a model for others, according to advocates for immigration law enforcement.

“These things will soon spring up all across the country,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-illegal-immigrant group. “Local governments are tired of the federal government’s failure to control illegal immigration. Local governments can’t deport anyone but … what they can do is regulate businesses that serve as a magnet for illegal immigrants.”

The Mission Viejo effort differs from those of about two-dozen local governments because it seeks to control the hiring practices of local businesses.

The Mission Viejo ordinance will require city contractors to participate in the Department of Homeland Security’s Basic Pilot system, a free Internet service that tells employers if an applicant is eligible to work in the U.S.

It also requires the city to check the immigration status of its employees. The ordinance was unanimously approved on a first reading this month, with the backing of the Mission Viejo Chamber of Commerce.

Beginning in July, contractors who do not participate in the program would lose their city contracts.

Monitoring contractors was a natural for Mission Viejo, said Councilman Lance Maclean. The city of 98,000 people, which employs 107, uses contractors for landscaping, trash removal and street sweeping. The City Council last year approved about 50 contracts.

Councilman John Paul Ledesma said he conceived the new law after a resident told him about the Basic Pilot system. The resident had fought a day laborer site in Lake Forest and had urged Mission Viejo to pass an ordinance to limit loitering in an effort to clean up a similar site.

“We have the obligation to uphold the law,” said Ledesma, who is running for the 71st Assembly district in June.

As few as three cities in the U.S. require their contractors to participate in Basic Pilot. Two other cities that recently approved similar ordinances include Inola, Okla., and Hazelton, Penn., where a broader ordinance is being challenged in court on the grounds that local government cannot enforce federal law.

Georgia and Oklahoma have passed laws for state contractors. Cherokee County, Georgia, and Beaufort County in South Carolina have approved the rule for their contractors.

Source: Los Angeles Times