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.
Anyone who believes that illegal immigrants have not lowered wages in the construction, hotel, landscaping, and other industries needs to have their head examined. The full employment of which you speak does not correlate with the huge increases in crime we are seeing in major metro areas. Lower wages are the result of the influx of uneducated immigrants. The day this bill passes is the the day we have finally given up on being America.
To equate immigrants of the early 1900’s who came to a country whose economy was baded on manual labor and agriculture with those uneducated immmigrants of today who are coming to an economy based on technology and intellectual capital is fallcy my friend.
Did you read past the headline? The article isn't about giving my job to Manuel or Paco. It's about requiring employers to confirm all employees, not just new ones, through the Employment Eligibility Verification System. How accurate are the records in that database and how easy will it be to correct the information in it? If it is a typical government operation those answers are "not very" and "nearly impossible".
However, I can't think of any other way of making employers verify identity and citizenship/legal immigration status and you can't fight the illegal alien problem without employment verification.
short answer: no
not-so-short answer: do it and you will quickly find yourself on the bad end of thousands of unemployed americans
ping
Historially, unemployment figures don't remain static. What happens when the unemployment rate rises to 6%, as it surely will. Who loses their job--the illegal or US citizen? You continue to demagog and name call. Start using some facts.
Importing Poverty: Immigration and Poverty in the United States: A Book of Charts
The current influx of poorly educated immigrants is the result of two factors: first, a legal immigration system that favors kinship ties over skills and education; and second, a permissive attitude toward illegal immigration that has led to lax border enforcement and non-enforcement of the laws that prohibit the employment of illegal immigrants. In recent years, these factors have produced an inflow of some ten and a half million immigrants who lack a high school education. In terms of increased poverty and expanded government expenditure, this importation of poorly educated immigrants has had roughly the same effect as the addition of ten and a half million native-born high school drop-outs.
As a result of this dramatic inflow of low-skill immigrants,
--One-third of all immigrants live in families in which the head of the household lacks a high school education; and First-generation immigrants and their families, who are one-sixth of the U.S. population, comprise one-fourth of all poor persons in the U.S.
Immigration also plays a large role in child poverty:
--Some 38 percent of immigrant children live in families headed by persons who lack a high school education; Minor children of first-generation immigrants comprise 26 percent of poor children in the U.S.; and
--One out of six poor children in the U.S. is the offspring of first-generation immigrant parents who lack a high school diploma.
--Hispanic immigrants (both legal and illegal) comprise half of all first-generation immigrants and their families. Poverty is especially prevalent among this group. Hispanic immigrants have particularly low levels of education; more than half live in families headed by persons who lack a high school diploma. Family formation is also weak among Hispanic immigrants; fully 42 percent of the children of Hispanic immigrants are born out of wedlock. Hispanic immigrants thus make up a disproportionate share of the nation’s poor:
--First-generation Hispanic immigrants and their families now comprise 9 percent of the U.S. population but 17 percent of all poor persons in the U.S.; and Children in Hispanic immigrant families now comprise 11.7 percent of all children in the U.S. but 22 percent of all poor children in the U.S.
--Massive low-skill immigration works to counteract government anti-poverty efforts. While government works to reduce the number of poor persons, low-skill immigration pushes the poverty numbers up. In addition, low-skill immigration siphons off government anti-poverty funding and makes government efforts to shrink poverty less effective.
Low-skill immigrants pay little in taxes and receive high levels of government benefits and services. The National Academy of Sciences has estimated that each immigrant without a high school degree will cost U.S. taxpayers, on average, $89,000 over the course of his or her lifetime.[3] This is a net cost above the value of any taxes the immigrant will pay and does not include the cost of educating the immigrant’s children, which U.S. taxpayers would also heavily subsidize.
The whole thing is a shame. But it will make it easier for banks and credit card companies to track down deadbeats.
It will do nothing for National Security.
Pretty obvious in you support of illegals..........work for the government do you?
I think 2/3 of the descendents of American immigrants agree with the “rantings” of the right. If there are plenty of jobs as the nationwide stats show, why are Americans so fearful and angry??? You need to breakdown the 4.5 percent employment numbers. Geographically, about 50 percent of the US regions are financially depressed because globalism has shifted the good jobs into financial center urban areas and services suburbs, leaving many manufacturing centers (light, medium and heavy) abandoned. The only jobs available for these communities are service jobs, many paying substantially less than the industrial jobs that left. These people are employed, but are making less. Some are even holding three jobs per family to make ends meet. Take NY state as an excellent example. Globalism lead to exporting good paying manufacturing jobs to low labor manufacturing nations. Over 2/3 of NY state regionally is depressed in terms of wages. The beneficiaries of globalism (CEO’s, CEO staff, bankers who broker the loans to set up factories overseas, accountants/financial experts who review the deals, the lawyers who navigate the international legal agreements, stockbrokers who invest in the companies who are about to increase their profits from the lower labor costs) make tons of money. That is why New York City and surrounding suburbs are prospering while the rest of upstate NY is depress. Normally people in these depressed areas would migrate to the properous areas to do jobs servicing the well to do (construction, gardening, domestic services, etc) that in the past paid good wages. Such opportunities are taken away by low cost illegal aliens. Even the ones who are holding good paying jobs in the tech fields worry that within five years of developing a good product, their knowledge would be transferred to overseas for manufacturing and they would be looking for a new job. Furthermore, companies are taking advantage of the shortage of hi tech workers to bring in all the H-1B workers, not to just meet shortages, but replace higher paying older hi tech workers, as well as training these foreign workers so in five years they will return to their homeland to establish the foreign hi tech version of the American company for future off shoring. Despite good economic numbers and employment numbers, American workers in general are not stupid and very unhappy. That is why the GOP lost in 2006 and angry at anyone who can depress their wages, destroy their quality of life and increase taxes such as illegal aliens, H-1B workers and globalists. If you do not understand this reality and sentiment, you will never figure out why the free trade/open border ideology is a losing one in the US public. If the cost benefits of illegal alien labor and offshoring jobs overseas is helping huge numbers of American (i.e taxcuts), then you should not see such massive opposition to the immigration reform.
Guess you forgot to read the article...because what you’re blathering about is not what the article was discussing.
Lets see, take a trip over to spp.gov, look who is on committee there. Hmnnn? Could Michael Chertoff’s name appear there?
We can just look at the names. Why really was DHS created? If we are to be secure, one would believe they would be all for closing our borders, I mean the US borders.
Nothing buried in this 1000 page sellout would surprise me.
Don’t let facts get in the way of being compassionate towards the ‘poor’ illegals just looking for opportunity. The opportunity they seek is to use our public services, to remit cash back to their relatives, to use children to ‘anchor’ themselves in our country, and to flout our laws and legal system when they get caught being here illegally.
The solution to this problem is right before our eyes. First, secure the border.
Second, create a biometric citizen id system.
Third, identify those here illegally and those who employ them
Fourth, deport the 600,000 who have already been ordered deported by our courts and immigration system!
Fifth, AFTER we have secured the borders, deported the worst of the criminal element, identified the most blatant companies which are exploiting illegals, and created a secure national id system, THEN we can make RATIONAL decisions on what to do with those remaining.
The dirty little secret is that it would probably cost us alot less to deport them than we currently spend in welfare, prisons, medical care and education programs ....to accommodate their being here now.
What we want is the border secured before we hand over the keys to this country to the illegals. Is that too hard to understand. Until I see verified, no nonsense control of the border then nothing will be satisfactory to me. Once that is done then lets talk about the 12-30 milliong illegals that are already here.
With an employment rate of 4.5% and a workforce of approx, 150 million....that is still nearly 7 million Americans unemployed...hardly “zero unemployment”
Also, this figure does not take into account unemployed who never filed for unemployment (the 4.5% quoted are only those who file for unemployment).....nor those who are still umemployed and no longer receive unemployment comp.
Real unemployment is much greater than the official quote
Whenever I hear “we really have zero unemployment” I have to laugh. Either the most brain-dead illegal-loving globalist, or just merely brain-dead, pushes this “zero unemployment” nonsense.
With an employment rate of 4.5% and a workforce of approx, 150 million....that is still nearly 7 million Americans unemployed...hardly “zero unemployment”
Also, this figure does not take into account unemployed who never filed for unemployment (the 4.5% quoted are only those who file for unemployment).....nor those who are still umemployed and no longer receive unemployment comp.
Real unemployment is much greater than the official quote
Whenever I hear “we really have zero unemployment” I have to laugh. Either the most brain-dead illegal-loving globalist, or just merely brain-dead, pushes this “zero unemployment” nonsense.
Wrongo again, Johnnie.
You must really be from Minnesota because you come off as a know-it-all knackwurst chomper.
Actually you are the most abrasive ninny-twit I've come across in a long time.
You never read the articles you just disengage your brain and start typing willy-nilly.
It's great that asylums have allowed inmates the use of computers, but shouldn't permit access to the internet.
Time for your shock treatment.
I don’t seem to recall Heritage Foundation or the immigration hardliners complaining about employee verification when it was included in HR4437, the enforcement only bill authored by Sensenbrenner and passed by the House in Dec 2005.
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