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PHOENIX — Arizona voters will likely get a chance to do what lawmakers and a federal judge have so far refused to do — ease the state's new law imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

A business-financed group filed about 284,000 signatures Tuesday for its own version of a statute. Backers say their version provides "tough, enforceable, fair" laws. Only 153,365 signatures must be valid to qualify for the Nov. 4 ballot.

The measure, dubbed Stop Illegal Hiring, contains the same penalties as the state law that took effect Jan. 1. It allows a judge to suspend all state licenses of any firm found to have knowingly hired an undocumented worker. A second violation within three years results in license revocation.

But this version requires prosecutors to prove the owner or an officer of the company had "actual knowledge" a worker is here illegally. The fact that an underling has deliberately hired the undocumented worker and the owner may have reason to believe the person is illegal would not be enough.

Potentially more significant, it provides absolute immunity to firms that either use the E-Verify system or simply comply with existing federal laws about checking the identity of new workers.

That law requires only that employers attest on the I-9 form that the applicant "is eligible to work in the United States," and, if documents have been presented, that they have been examined and "appear to be genuine and relate to the individual."

"This is employer amnesty," said Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, the architect of Arizona's current employer- sanctions law, which the new initiative would alter.

He pointed out that even a federal appellate court judge, hearing a challenge last month to the state statute, blasted the federal I-9 process. "The documents (workers present to companies) are fraudulent," Judge John Walker said.

"All you have to do is have documents," Pearce explained. "It doesn't matter that they're good or not."

But attorney Andrew Pacheco, chairman of the group that filed the initiative, said this is not a license for companies to accept bogus documents. He cited a provision that says anyone who knowingly accepts a fake ID when hiring someone can be sent to prison.

Here, too, though, a prosecutor would have to show the person who accepted the fake ID had actual knowledge that the person presenting the fake papers was not the person whose name was listed.

Pearce said requiring prosecutors to prove someone had "actual knowledge" a worker is undocumented "is an impossible task." He said the standard used in state law is "constructive knowledge," meaning prosecutors could show that the person knew, or should have known based on the evidence, that the employee should not have been hired.

Pacheco said the "actual knowledge" requirement is there for a reason. He said the existing law is overbroad.

"It does not protect innocent jobs," Pacheco said, because a firm could be shut down because of the decision of a lower-level worker. "It would have all the employees of a company, where one bad hiring decision is made, fired to punish one employer."

The measure also contains several other differences from the new Arizona law.

One of the more notable is it requires a signed complaint before county attorneys can begin an investigation of illegal hiring practices. Pacheco said that is only fair.

"Allowing anonymous complaints is a recipe for mayhem by union members who might want to close down a non-union shop, radical environmentalists that might want to close down a business, or even just a business competitor," he said. Pacheco said it's small comfort that an investigation ultimately would turn up nothing.

"It's too much to ask a business owner to go through the investigative process and hire expensive attorneys based on a complaint with no basis," he said.

The campaign is being financed largely by $374,880 from a group called Wake Up Arizona that is composed of business owners. It is headed by Mac Magruder, who owns seven McDonald's franchises.

There is no public report on where Wake Up Arizona gets its money.

At this point, it looks like the choice voters will have is keep the current law or replace it with Pacheco's initiative.

Former Republican gubernatorial hopeful Don Goldwater said late Tuesday that he did not get enough signatures to put a version of the law that is even stricter than the one adopted by the Legislature on the ballot. It would have put a firm out of business after just one violation.

State lawmakers already have addressed some of the business community's complaints about the original law.

Most notably, the statute was changed to say that companies can be punished only for the undocumented workers they hired beginning this year. They face no state liability for illegal immigrants already on the payroll when the statute took effect Jan. 1.

It also provides some new protections from prosecution to companies that take additional steps when screening prospective workers. And it says a hiring violation at one location of a firm shuts down only that location, not the entire corporation.

Pacheco said the law, even with those changes, is too onerous.

On StarNet: Find more immigration-related resources, such as videos, special reports and multimedia presentations, at azstarnet.com/border.