Citizenship Check Requirements Banned

A Temecula ordinance requiring business owners to check their employees citizenship was tossed out by a new state law.

Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law this month that bars the state, cities and counties from requiring private employers to use E-Verify to check employee's citizenship, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"It's very disappointing when you spend all the time, you go to your elected representatives and you get them to do something, and then at the higher level, they squash you," said Ted Wegener, the founder of the Menifee-based Conservative Activists, to the newspaper.

Temecula, Murrieta and Lake Elsinore enacted ordinances requiring business owners use E-Verify within the last year, though no businesses have been cited for failure to comply, the newspaper reported.

To read about Temecula's ordinance, .

Residents were invited to turn in businesses they suspected of employing illegal immigrants, though nobody was reported, a Murrieta city official told the paper.

"We have not received a single phone call… We did not believe there was ever a problem with illegal immigration here in Murrieta," said Brian Ambrose of the city manager's office.

The author of the new bill said the requirement put an unneeded burden on business owners.

"It was costly, time-consuming. It's unfair for big businesses and definitely for small business," Paul Fong (D-Sunnyvale) told the Times. "Why make a flawed system mandatory?"

Some small business owners denounced the city's decision for putting extra work in their laps.

Barry Cohen, owner of Olivera's Coffee & Juice Bar on Margarita and Rancho Vista roads, already checks his employees' passports, social security cards and driver's licenses.

"(Temecula's E-Verify ordinance) is duplication of work, which costs money," he said. "When (a business) is a structure of one, anything I don't have to do is a benefit."

Other businesses felt the benefits were worth the extra time spent.

"It is not a lot of work," said Paul Villamil, Temecula branch vice president of AppleOne Employment Services, a temporary hiring and job placement agency. "It's strictly an internet-based program that’s simply data entry."