Facing the most severe crackdown on illegal immigration in decades, U.S. employers are fighting back. Companies have been damaged by legislation that, for instance, revokes licenses of firms twice caught with illegal immigrants. Now, it seems, a backlash is coming; in states like Arizona and Oklahoma, employers' groups are petitioning for ballot initiatives that will slacken the regulations. The illegal immigrant crackdown is a relatively new occurrence for the U.S. government -- for several years, the authorities took a much more hands-off approach to enforcement.
See "U.S. employers challenge crackdown on illegal immigrants", Julia Preston, International Herald Tribune, July 6, 2008