Immigration nationImmigration nation

State restaurant association executives are battling a rising tide of immigration-related legislation as states — frustrated by little federal action on the issue and emboldened by a recent Supreme Court decision upholding an Arizona law — increasingly take matters into their own hands.

Lawmakers have shifted into overdrive since the court’s late-May decision supporting a state’s right to mandate the use of a worker-eligibility database known as E-Verify and revoke the licenses of businesses that do not.

Just last month Alabama passed an immigration law characterized as being even tougher than Arizona’s, which has been referred to by opponents as the “business death penalty.”

State executives anticipate that the activity will cascade down
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