Posted on 06/06/2007 8:57:59 AM PDT by GFritsch
Should the federal government have the power to fire you from your current job? That’s a dramatic new role for the federal government buried in a provision of the immigration bill before the Senate.
Under this plan, Heritage experts Wes Dyck, Bill Beach and James Sherk explain, “American workers would actually need approval from [the Department of Homeland Security] to continue working in their current jobs.”
Millions of American citizens and legal residents, they continue, are not marked as either eligible or ineligible to work in the government’s current Employment Eligibility Verification System database. And if Washington bureaucrats cannot determine if someone is “approved” for work, an employer would have to fire him.
“Forcing companies to fire workers who fail EEVS verification would force millions of U.S. citizens and legal immigrants out of work because of bureaucratic mistakes,” Heritage’s experts argue.
This is a tremendous expansion of government intrusion into everyday life. Instead of targeting law-abiding American citizens and legal immigrants, they argue, the government should target its enforcement on those sectors of the economy where illegal immigrants are most likely to work, such as agriculture or construction.
Immigration update
Here’s the latest Heritage analysis of the Senate immigration proposal, which is expected to come to a vote this week:
What to do with illegal immigrants already here. Lawmakers, write James Carafano and Matthew Spalding, should “reject amnesty for those who have broken the law, create a powerful deterrent against further illegal migration, and insist that those who wish to live and work in the United States first return to their countries of origin and then apply, without partiality or prejudice and in line and on par with other applicants, for legal entry into the United States.”
“Some backers of the Senate bill have decried such an ‘attrition’ strategy as wildly impractical or a ‘silent amnesty.’ But it is the only strategy that offers a fair and reasonable alternative between the extremes of legal amnesty and forced deportation. Unlike those alternatives, it relies on the marketplace and incentives to resolve over time this seemingly intractable situation in accord with core principles of governance and the interests and individual choices of a very large and diverse unlawful population.”
Programs that might be implemented to encourage legal instead of illegal immigration could include: a real temporary worker program; a streamlined visa programs; an employment sponsorship system; and a national trust to encourage voluntary return. Enhancing border security. National security expert James Carafano points out that Congress’ “proposal would not improve border security.” While it contains some useful programs, its amnesty provisions and its poorly-designed temporary worker program will encourage further illegal immigration even as it leaves the border unsecured with its ill-designed trigger mechanisms. In addition, he notes that the bill focuses on enforcement spending and not on actual enforcement results. Ensuring workers are legal. Instead of expanding government meddling to ensure firms hire only legal immigrants and that temporary workers return home, Beach and Sherk write, a better solution would be to turn to surety bonds. Insurance companies that back these bonds would have an incentive to efficiently ensure that employers hire only legal workers, while temporary workers would have an incentive to leave the country when their visas expire.
Fed up? Had enough? Remember reading about the Boston Tea Party in our history books?
Instead of tea bundles, how about tossing in our politicians? No use throwing the illegal immigrants in, they can swim as well as Teddy Kennedy.
Last week the unemployment rate figures were released. At 4.5% we have full employment. Any thing under 5 and you are running into the marginal/unemployable. The people who are too sick, to messed up to actually hold down a job. So NO ONE is coming to “take your job”
It is exactly this sort of mindless demagoguery that is keeping a large segment of the the population from joining the Right on this issue. They want something done about the Illegals but they have too many family stories of how their ancestors were subject to this same sort of Nativist ranting when they came here to be comfortable with you all.
Well, apparently more and more Americans want to give up their rights to health care choice. Why not go all out and create an all-out fascist, Marxist, nanny-state.
Maybe they could throw in a provision that makes it hard for companies to fire an employee - works well for France, don’t it?
I see you're back on the same old street corner. You throw verbage around like Waste Management throws garbage.
That’s fine as it is now, what about when the economy goes into a down turn?
Why not go all out and create an all-out fascist, Marxist, nanny-state.
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Hillary’s (and the rest of Marxist liberals) wet dream....that is EXACTLY what their agenda is.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Will congress have to go thru the same back ground test..maybe it will get some of them in limbo....
My brother makes pretty good money throwing bags on the ramp for Southwest. What will happen to him when these “12 Million” illegals suddenly become legal and announce that they will do my brother’s job for half of what he makes?
You guys just want to be mad. You are not at all intrested in any facts or solutions.
1st you are pissed with the Govt for not punishing Businesses that hire illegals.
Then when the Govt says well we need some way to know who is legal and who is illegal, you are mad at that plan.
Face it, you don’t want any solutions. You just want to be able to bitch
Time to toss the tax code into the drink along with the politicians. We allow politicians to take our money before we even see it (withholding) and then act shocked when they want to spend it (on illegals) in order to vote buy. Want to take away the vote buying power of Congress; stop funding them.
Typical of our government, they turn a blind eye as our jobs are out-sourced overseas and cover the other eye as employers import illegal aliens to take what’s left from us...
Self-contained “secure ID” is not possible, and anyone trying to sell that concept is either mistaken or lying. Secure ID is only possible by reference to a central database. Currency is not a good example because it is fungible by definition - every dollar is the same as every other dollar, and you almost always have a direct comparison model at hand.
Personal ID is much different, and must meet far different requirements. The easy part is to establish that the person and the ID card match. The old biometric is the drivers license picture, easily manipulated by forgers, or even by teenagers with a decent printer and a cheap laminating kit. And while the more complex biometrics, such as fingerprints, iris scans, or even encrypted DNA profiles might be beyond the teenager, they certainly will not be beyond the forger.
But the real problem is the second one, which is to guarantee that the IDENTITY represented by the card also matches the person. This works both ways - establish that the identity is valid, AND that the person is the true owner of that identity. That CANNOT be absolutely established without the database, but is actually the most critical element - and also, the most disliked and controversial.
If you object to it on principle, then you have no choice but to accept the possibility of false identities. Your constrtuction company might hire an illegal alien, your day care facility might hire a child molester, or your bank might hire an identity thief because the name and birthdate they took from a cemetery headstone came up clean on the background check you ran.
Fake IDs will be on the street within a month of the first real ones. The biometric will have to be retrievable by the employer to be useful, so it will also have to be retrievable by the forger posing as an employer. The identity could come from a friend, a cemetery (as mentioned above) or just the forger’s imagination. A background check will be clean, so how will you detect the falsehood?
However, the database need not be so pervasive that it becomes a real intrusion on ordinary citizens. Database contents need never be sent outside of the host agency, with the exception of immigration or national security purposes. They will need a larger staff, but the database host organization should verify the employment application data sent to it, and respond with only the answer - valid, not valid, or conditional approval pending departure from previous employer.
Multiple employers would require special accommodation, but could be handled. Rejections could be challenged and corrected, but would require the applicant to present himself and his documents to the agency for verification.
A large employer should be able to submit applications via a direct computer link, but a small employer would not need anything more technologically advanced than a cell phone with a camera and text capability.
I am NOT worried about inconveniencing the illegal aliens among us, OR those who deliberately employ them. Yes, it does require that everyone legitimately employable be vetted, but the alternative is to continue to accommodate fraud, identity theft, and continued safe harbor for millions of illegal aliens. Choose one or the other, you cannot have both.
I think you missed the point of this post. The message wasn’t that illegals would take your job. The message was that the Bill requires all employers to check ALL employment against the government database of “legal” employees.
Since most of us aren’t in the “government database of legal employees”, our employers might have to fire us under the law’s provision, or else face stiff fines.
Instead, all of us might have to report our names and status to the government, so the government can add our names to the databasee. A huge government database of every person’s status to work.
Has nothing to do with immigration, just a major intrusion into the privacy of citizens, and a risk that our employers might get charged for employing us, unless they fire us.
I don’t want to bitch. If the government would enforce the laws that were suppose to be in place after the last amnesty, establish English as the official language, and end the anchor babies BS, I’d be hootin’ and hollerin’. But that’s just me, and 75% of the rest of the country.
Insightful response. You should be proud of your work.
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