Free Republic

A billboard "welcoming" illegal aliens to Florida and sarcastically thanking Gov. Rick Scott appeared on Interstate 75 Wednesday. Produced by Floridians for Immigration Enforcement, the billboard calls out Scott for the state's failure to adopt an E-Verify law. "This is a wake-up call for Governor Scott, who promised Floridians he would work to get mandatory E-Verify in the state to protect our legal workers," said Jack Oliver, legislative director of the group that goes by the name FLIMEN. The 40-foot-by-10-foot illuminated billboard is along I-75's southbound lanes between the Georgia border and I-10. Georgia, along with neighboring Alabama and South...

If you walk up to a barn, you might say, “Something stinks in there.” If you talk to today’s teenagers, you might hear, “Hey dude, what smells?” In Shakespeare’s time, “Something is rotten in Denmark.” Hamlet Act 1, scene 4, 87–91: The character Marcellus, and not Hamlet, is the one who coined the phrase. There's a reason he said the "State of Denmark" rather than just Denmark: the fish are rotting from the head down—all is not well at the top of the political hierarchy. In 2012, you might say, “Something is rotten in the U.S. Congress.” At this time,...

In the upcoming presidential election, two issues are more important than any others: repealing Obamacare and halting illegal immigration. If we fail at either one, the country will be changed permanently. Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die. But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back. Similarly, if Obamacare isn't repealed in the next few years, it never will be.

This is not going to be a Merry Christmas for many of the workers at Pacific Steel. After a recent crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security, 200 workers who could not provide a valid social security number are being laid off. Those let go from the third largest foundry in the United States include many highly skilled workers who have been at the company for decades. “It’s very sad,” said spokeswoman Elisabeth Jewel from the firm Aroner, Jewel & Ellis Partners. “The employees who are being terminated now have the most seniority. Many have been there 20 to 30...

Unemployment rates have fallen in Alabama amid new legal pressure on companies to comply with a popular immigration reform law. September was the first full month that the reform was in force, and the unemployment rate fell from 9.8 percent in September to 9.3 percent in October, according to a Nov. 18 report from the state government. The rates fell from 9.9 percent to 9 percent in Etowah County, from 8.8 percent to 8.1 percent in Marshall county, and from 11.6 percent to 10.6 percent in DeKalb county. “The latest fall in unemployment numbers is proof that American citizens will...

Lawmakers in several states have vowed to pass undocumented employer sanction laws after the Supreme Court upheld Arizona's this year. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has drummed up some support to pass a federal version in Congress that would require all employers to use the government's E-Verify database to ensure their employees are authorized to work--or risk losing their business license. Arizona provides a case study for the effects of a tough E-Verify law on the labor market. According to a study released this year by the Public Policy Institute of California, about 92,000 or 17 percent of the Hispanic non-citizen...

Sen. John Boozman is co-sponsoring a bill that would require every employer in the country to use the E-Verify program to screen for illegal workers - but until earlier this month, the senator himself wasn’t signed up for the system, thus violating a 1996 law that makes its use mandatory for all congressional offices. The Arkansas Republican wasn’t alone. As of the beginning of this month, seven Senate offices were not signed up to use the system, which lets employers check would-be workers’ Social Security numbers against a government database to determine whether they are in the country legally. After...

For years, activists against illegal immigration pushed cities across California to adopt ordinances ordering businesses to verify that their employees were eligible to work in the U.S. snip But those victories appear to have been wiped out this month with legislation signed into law that prohibits the state, cities and counties from mandating that private employers use E-Verify. snip Those who sought the state law in reaction to the growing number of localities adopting mandatory E-Verify rules said such moves were a distraction from a larger problem. "As a nation, we are in such desperate need of immigration reform," said...

Rick Perry can't get out of his own way. During the presidential debates, he has reviled three immigration issues that Republicans hold dear: passing mandatory E-Verify legislation, rejecting federal and state versions of the DREAM Act, and building a border fence.

September 24th, 2011 To: Barack H. Obama 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500 RE: Social Security Administration Notice of Mismatch Letter Dear. Mr. Obama, Currently, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) require employers, by law, to establish that their employees are eligible to work in the United States. The Form I-9 was developed for verifying that persons are eligible to work in the United States. Employers are required by law to have employees hired after November 6, 1986 fill out Section 1 of the Form I-9 when they start to work. Section 1 of Form I-9 asks for...

Opponents of a border fence (e.g. Rick Perry) say we shouldn’t build it because what’s needed is a program to turn off the “jobs magnet” that encourages illegal immigrants to try to cross the border in the first place. OK. It turns out there is at least one such program–it’s called E-Verify, and it checks the info supplied by job applicants against a national database of Social Security numbers, etc. , alerting employers if they are about to hire someone who seems to be in the country illegally. Needless to say, the same people who oppose a border fence also...

House Republicans on Wednesday jump-started the immigration debate, pushing through the Judiciary Committee a key immigration-enforcement measure to require businesses to check new employees’ work status against a government database — (The) bill would invalidate those (however, those state and local) laws, which prompted Democrats to accuse Republicans of overriding states’ rights. “Until we step up and do the job, I don’t think we should be pre-empting anybody trying to deal with this issue,”

Representatives of almost 30 conservative, Tea Party and limited government groups, representing millions, will affirm their opposition to the bill that would make E-Verify mandatory for all workers and businesses, according to Kathryn Serkes of Take Back Washington. Last week, the group launched a media campaign and sent a letter to Congress outlining their concerns. Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/21/3927076/e-verify-news-conference-today.html#ixzz1Ybi2lzpE

Illegal immigration has become a heads-we-win / tails-you-lose proposition in this country. If the supporters of amnesty and open borders could get that codified into law, they would. Since they can't, they support comprehensive illegal immigration reform, with the idea being that the amnesty will occur, but they'll stall and slow-walk the security measures into oblivion. Since the people are onto that ploy and have demanded security first, the latest tactic is just to refuse to enforce the law. We can pass a bill that says we're putting a fence on our southern border, but we can't get the fence...

With legislation pending both in the U.S. Congress and the Michigan House of Representatives to require employers to use a new federal immigration database, even conservative and Tea Party groups are speaking out against the idea.

View this short video. Pathetic, isn't it?

September 14, 2011 This is a clarion call. A call to Americans of every creed and race to resist the flagrant violation of our Constitution and the rule of law by Barack Obama and all of those who are complicit with him. The people charged with the authority and responsibility to uphold the law and defend the Constitution are missing in action. Cleary it is up to "we the people". We could have stopped it at the ballot box (well...maybe) but this is the mess we are in now and we have to deal with it. After three years I...

The House Judiciary Committee will mark up a bill from Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) on Thursday morning that would require all U.S. employers to use E-Verify, the Department of Homeland Security system that checks whether new hires are eligible to work in the United States. Smith called on President Obama to make E-Verify part of his jobs plan on Monday, arguing the law could open up millions of jobs for legal residents as the unemployment remains above 9 percent. The program checks candidates' Social Security numbers against a federal database to verify they are allowed to work in the...

E-Verify is an Internet-based system operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in partnership with the Social Security Administration (SSA). E-Verify is currently free to employers and is available in all 50 states. E-Verify provides an automated link to federal databases to help employers determine employment eligibility of new hires and the validity of their Social Security numbers. If you were an employer and entered Barack Hussein Obama’s social security number 042-68-4425 into the data base to verify that he was eligible for employment in the United States you could not legally hire him. Here is what e-verify would tell you about...

SACRAMENTO - Assemblymember Paul Fong (D-Cupertino) today issued the following statement regarding the federal E-Verify mandate bill by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas): Assemblymember Fong: Rep. Smith's E-Verify mandate bill deeply concerns me. I do not support any flawed mandated system that costs jobs. E-verify was intended to be a voluntary process and requiring businesses to interview and hire in accordance with this faulty system is not in the best interest of businesses or workers. I've introduced a bill in the California Legislature, AB 1236 that addresses the problems with E-Verify. E-verify has mistakenly identified U.S. citizens as non-citizens which prevents...