Around 7:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, 12 men wait on the corner of South Chestnut Road and East Broadway Road, an informal day labor center in Mesa, Ariz.

Some of them stand, others lean against the street sign or against one of the nearby trucks. More still just sit on the curb, shading their eyes from the bright morning sun.

Twice as many men wait just down the road from them, at the larger corner of South Gilbert Road and East Broadway Road.

These are illegal immigrants from Mexico, waiting to be hired for the day by any one of the several contractors and the occasional homeowner who will drive by and pick them up to use on job sites around the state.

Scenes like this are happening all over the nation, especially in states that share a border with Mexico.

In March 2003 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), part of the Department of Homeland Security, started going after employers that knowingly hired illegal immigrants. Originally, they just hit the businesses with fines, though the fines proved to be ineffective, said Lori Haley, an ICE spokeswoman.

“Now we are looking to go after employers criminally and those who are helping illegal immigrants get phony documents,” she said.

By the end of the second quarter of the 2007 fiscal year, ICE had already arrested 527 people on criminal charges relating to illegal immigration—both employers and the immigrants themselves—compared to 718 criminal arrests for all of the 2006 fiscal year and 25 criminal arrests in the 2002 fiscal year, according to a worksite enforcement fact sheet provided by Haley.

ICE has already made 2,763 administrative immigration arrests, which generally refer to illegal alien workers who are in the United States, through the second quarter of the 2007 fiscal year, compared to 3,667 for the whole 2006 fiscal year and 485 administrative arrests for the 2002 fiscal year, according to the fact sheets.

“We do a long investigation of any of the businesses,” Haley said. “Any illegal immigrants we find are processed for removal.”

The men who wait for work on Broadway also wait for the day when they will be one of the people arrested, processed and deported back to Mexico, said Pedro Dominguez, 29, of Puebla, Mexico. Dominguez has been living and working in the United States illegally for the last three years. He spent most of his time in California, but has been in Arizona for two months.

“Every time they say they are going to arrest us, I get scared,” Dominguez said, though he has never been caught or deported.

Now the Arizona Legislature and the U.S. Congress are going head-to-head in the fight over illegal immigration by targeting businesses that hire illegal immigrants, with both sides trying to create a system that will set up a program for people to work legally in the United States.

State Rep. Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican, introduced House Bill 2779, also called the Fair and Legal Employment Act, which would make employers sign affidavits attesting that they have not knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

“All we’re doing is have them sign an affidavit making them say that they’re honest employers,” Pearce said.

Responsibility would fall to county attorneys and the state attorney general to enforce the law, according to the bill.

“Most of the investigations will be by the county attorney,” Pearce said. “Third violation and the person would lose the right to do business in the state of Arizona.”

He introduced the bill, which passed in the state House and is now awaiting a vote in the state Senate, because of the failures of the federal government in dealing with this issue, Pearce said.

“ICE is the most incompetent agency in the world and they sit there and do nothing,” he said. “States have inherent authority; it’s in the Constitution, in the 10th amendment. The feds are the one that set the law and the states enforce the law.”

Rep. Steve Farley, a Tucson Democrat, disagreed, saying illegal immigration is an issue for the federal government.

“It simply is—it’s in the Constitution,” he said. “It’s a matter of fact, not a matter of opinion, the state has limited ability in what they can do.”

Beyond the disagreement over who should handle illegal immigration, lawmakers also differed on how much money illegal immigrants in the workforce was costing the United States.

According to Pearce, $3.25 billion is lost in tax revenue because of the underground workforce.

“3 million to 4 million people are already here illegally and 10,000 more cross every day,” he said. “You can’t afford what’s happening.”

The underground workforce is propping up the Social Security Trust Fund, though, Farley said.

“The illegal immigrants end up giving $9 billion to the trust fund, with their fake Social Security numbers, which are still valid,” he said.

Plus, the Fair and Legal Employment Act would be bad for small businesses, running them into the ground, Farley said.

“They say that these will stop illegal immigration, but this is based on a verification system that isn’t proven,” he said. “Businesses could be driven out of business just because they unknowingly hire someone illegal.”

Representatives for local businesses agreed, pointing out businesses cannot always tell whether or not documents employees provide are real and that the federal government needs to address what constitutes valid documentation of citizenship, said Roger Yohem, spokesman for the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association (SAHBA).

“If the feds can’t tell, how can businesses tell?” Yohem said. “They’ve raided businesses and for a handful of workers, ICE can’t even tell if they are legal or not.”

Pearce disagreed, claiming that hiring illegal immigrants actually gives businesses an edge over the competition.

“Businesses that employ illegal immigrants avoid paying their payroll and benefits and taxes,” he said.

Pearce used Disneyland, a crowded place, as an example of how to stop the “alien invasion.”

“At Disneyland, if they want the crowds to go home, they shut down the rides,” he said. “We need to shut down the rides.”

Farley pointed to the federal Security Through Regularized Immigration and a Vibrant Economy (STRIVE) Act as the right step on the way to a solution.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R.-Ariz., and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D.-Ill., proposed the STRIVE Act as a bipartisan solution to the issues with employers hiring illegal immigrants.

“It was pretty critical that it was bipartisan, especially with the recent change in the majority,” said Chandler Morse an aide in Rep. Flake’s office. “We had hoped for a bicameral bill with the Senate version being McCain-Kennedy.”

According to an overview of the bill, the STRIVE Act has six main parts: securing our borders, strengthening interior enforcement, bolstering employment verification, creating a new worker program, reforming the visa system in a way that protects families, and allowing for earned legalization for qualified, hardworking individuals.

The bill was created with the intention of providing legal workers in the United States, Morse said.

“What we have is a very broken federal system of immigration,” he said. “We aren’t going to have the workers that our economy needs otherwise.”

The STRIVE Act was created with the intention of source of making illegal workers, like Dominguez, a legal source of work for U.S. businesses and to keep the money they earn in the United States.

“I work almost every day, usually for a landscaper,” Dominguez said. “Sometimes I paint. I am a painter. I send the money to my wife and two children back in Mexico.”

While the federal system is broken, Morse stressed that the federal government needs to be addressing immigration.

“We can understand why states like Arizona want to fix the border,” he said. “But having 50 different systems makes matters worse, not better.”

The federal government needs to create a true guest worker program to solve the problem, Yohem, of SAHBA, said.

“There’s this tie to citizenry with a worker program and the government needs to separate the two,” he said. “There is a true guest worker program in Europe, where people go to work in the factories for a specific amount of time, then go home, and then come back after a while. We need a model like that.”

Caught in the middle of the battle between the state and federal government are businesses and the illegal immigrants themselves.

Illegal immigrants come to the United States to find work that offers better opportunities for their families, Dominguez said.

“I make more here than I do in Mexico,” he said. “People in Mexico don’t go to school, so they didn’t learn so much.”

Rev. Trina Zelle of the Interfaith Worker Justice pointed out that only 10 percent, roughly, of the workforce is illegal workers, something that most people do not understand.

“A lot of people are thinking that everyone they are seeing is illegal,” she said. “Chances are nine out of 10 that person is here legally.”

Zelle focused more on worker treatment by businesses rather than the illegal workers themselves in her solution for the issue.

“Don’t let it be profitable, or possible, for businesses exploit workers,” she said. “Our philosophy is that a worker is a worker is a worker, no matter their legal status. If worker protection is better, then it’s not going to benefit anyone to hire anyone illegally because it won’t be worth it.”

It is not that U.S. citizens will not do the work Mexicans will, as many argue, but that U.S. citizens expect to be treated fairly, Zelle said.

“It’s not work we won’t do, it’s that we won’t work of the pair isn’t fair,” she said. “We’re not stupid. If we are paid fairly, we will work. I have four children and they all have great work ethic.”

Until any level of government comes up with a solution for the illegal immigration issue, the men will still wait at the corner of Chestnut and Broadway, hoping they will get work.

“I am going to go home in about seven months,” Dominguez said. “I don’t know if I will be back.”

By 9 a.m., only five workers are left at the small corner. Three of them have stepped back from the curb, into the side yard of some townhouses, relaxed against the cinderblock wall. Only Dominguez and one other still stand at the street sign on the corner, still actively waiting for a truck to come get them.

“I work here to improve my family’s life,” Dominguez said. “So I will keep waiting for work, until it comes.”