Posted on 09/19/2011 2:04:14 PM PDT by tedw
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at michiganmessenger.com ...
If we require people not to hire illegals, then we need tools to help them. E-verify has been around back before 2008, and I joked before the election that I doubted Obama could pass it. Too bad all the candidates were not required to pass e-verify.
E-Verify PING
The Obama administration is giving $$$$$$ to doctors and others to put all medical records into a great big federal database. And who will have access to this great big database that every doctor’s office and hospital in the country will be required to use????
(daughter is in college, and she had to go to the college health center. they required her to consent (though she could not not consent) to her records being put in this database. She tried to opt out. Not possible, she was told. )
It sounds to me like another attempt to get a national ID passed through other means, but then again, I could be wrong.
Then they are NOT true TEA people.
Infiltration!InfiltrationInfiltrationInfiltrationInfiltrationInfiltrationInfiltration
“On the other hand the plan the Indian government is pursuing to build a biometric database of all of their 1+ billion citizens is scary, scary stuff.”
Yes. And it won’t be accurate and it will be very wasteful.
Look, I am very tough on illegals. I do NOT like what Perry said about tuition and other huckabeeisms and I expect romney to really take him to town on this. But e-verify will not be good for our economy with 9% unemployment and not good for privacy during any time.
I wonder if Michele Bachmann will call for an opt-in for that provision. :/
The "state" that belongs to the first three digits of a SSN don't really mean much of consequence. I was born in AZ and have a SSN issued by WA.
Thank-you Dr. Thorne for posting. I agree with you. numbersUSA has done outstanding work, which I fully support, on this and other issues surrouding immigration.
So what is your solution?
I believe I am as much a rebel against unreasonable government interference in my life as any diehard independent, conservative could be. However if all the facts used in e-verify are already available for public exposure, bringing such facts together for legitimate cross checking can be very helpful for legitimate purposes. I take note that it is the e-verify system that currently is a thorn in Obama’s attempt to hide the POTUSA eligibility question/problem. I believe the use for good out weighs the use for bad. I can think of many societal bad things in existence that are much worse.
E-verify is skirting the real issue. The Government won't enforce the border, so they get off the hook by requiring employers to do the clean up work. CLOSE THE BORDER!
Can’t the biometric ID requirement be stripped in conference committee?
Also, we need to do something about all of these anchor babies birthed by illegal aliens.
AMERICAN JOBS FOR AMERICAN WORKERS
The majority of persons who enter the U.S. illegally or unlawfully overstay temporary visas do so for purposes of employment. According to government and respected think tanks’ estimates, there are over 8 million illegal aliens currently working in the U.S. out of a total illegal population of 11 million. These are considered very conservative estimates. The numbers could be considerably higher. Employment of such individuals has been illegal since 1986, although that law has never been seriously enforced. If access to employment were curtailed in accord with that law, many current illegal workers would leave the country voluntarily, along with their families, and the number of future illegal entrants would be greatly reduced.
Since employment is the magnet that draws illegal aliens into the U.S., it follows that the best way to reduce illegal immigration is to shrink the employment magnet. To accomplish this without resorting to the method of routinely rounding up and deporting thousands of illegal workers only to have them return and obtain another readily available job, policy should focus on the businesses that hire illegal immigrants and let general employment rules rather than individual arrests drive the reduction in illegal immigration.
The policy should be based on the principles of empowerment, deterrence, and information. It should empower honest employers by giving them the tools to determine quickly and accurately whether a new hire is an authorized worker. It should hold employers free from penalty if they inadvertently hire an illegal worker after following the prescribed procedures.
Further, the policy should empower honest employers by freeing them from the burden of competing with dishonest businesses that deliberately hire illegal workers. This means that it must deter dishonest employers who willfully employ unverified and unlawful workers. For deterrence to work, however, both the government and employers must have timely and accurate information regarding new hires.
The most promising solution to this problem is the E-Verify program—a real-time, Web-based, voluntary verification system run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). E-Verify can determine with great accuracy the authenticity of the personal information and credentials offered by new hires. In most cases, verification occurs almost instantly. The E-Verify program only validates the status of new hires. It does not provide a job applicant’s immigration status. Nor does it pre-screen applicants or re-verify the status of current employees. Federal contractors and subcontractors are required to use the E-Verify system to verify their employees’ eligibility to work in the United States if their contract includes the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) E-Verify Clause.
Roy Beck, NumbersUSA President, in recent testimony before Congress, has offered recommendations that could have hundreds of thousands of Americans working without any cost to the government. Specifically, there are six easy changes in immigration law, and one that would be a little more complex, that could result in one million additional Americans having a job a year from now:
1.Allow all employers to voluntarily run their entire workforce through E-Verify. Give companies that want to ensure they have a 100% legal workforce the ability to use E-Verify on the pre-existing workforce. This will open up thousands of jobs quickly for unemployed Americans.
2. Immediately begin the roll-out of mandatory E-Verify. Begin the mandate for employers of more than 25 in the top 10 industries with illegal-alien workforces (excluding agriculture).
3. Provide full funding so that DHS can quickly train as many local and state police forces as desired to enter into the 287(g) program.
4. Suspend issuing Green Cards to visa lottery winners. The lottery randomly selects workers from around the world to compete with U.S. workers without any regard to the immigrants’ education, skills or any other criteria, or how any of that matches the needs of our society.
5. Suspend the chain migration categories of adult siblings and adult children of anchor immigrants. They fill up U.S. occupations without any regard for their effect on the U.S. workers competing there. And we have no control over which occupations they affect the most as they are accepted without regard to their education, skills or job preferences. The net effect would be a significant reduction of the 1.2 million legal immigrants who enter this country annually.
6. Suspend issuing work permits to the parents of anchor immigrants. You can create renewable one-year Parent-Care Visitor Visas that allow anchor immigrants to care for their parents as long as they choose, if they provide proof of non-taxpayer supported health insurance coverage. Visitor Parents would not be given any kind of work permit and would not be allowed access to any taxpayer-supported social services. The cost of the care for foreign parents would be borne by the immigrants.
7. Dramatically reduce permanent work permits issued through employment-based categories to take jobs that Americans want. Last year, 166,000 of these Green Cards were issued.
American workers must not only compete against illegal aliens for jobs, but also legal foreign workers. Despite the economic downturn and more than 23 million Americans looking for full-time employment, the U.S. continues to bring in over 100,000 new, legal foreign workers a month. This includes new permanent residents (Green Cards) and long-term temporary visas and others who are authorized to take a job.
Legal immigration is a controllable variable that can and should be adjusted in the national interest. Our immigration policies should serve the long-term interests of all Americans, not the short-term interests of corporate and special (often political, religious and ethnic) interest groups. We need to move to a merit-based system that brings in the skills we need to be competitive in the global economy and in the numbers we can assimilate. And illegal immigration can be stopped and reversed if we as a nation make a resolute commitment to secure our borders and enforce our existing laws. Both major political parties and special interests have sacrificed the American worker on the altar of parochial self-interest. Enough is enough.
-- Benjamin Franklin"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
The political class has caused this problem by refusing to secure the borders and enforce the immigration laws that are on the books.
The solution is to replace them, not to strip away the liberty of the American people.
We need a tool to enforce our immigration laws. E-Verify goes a long way towards that goal. It has been in use since 1996 when it started as a pilot program. And E-Verify is scaling up fast and successfully. USCIS recently announced that since October 2009, more than 188,000 businesses at 700,000 worksites queried E-Verify 5.1 million times. That compares with about 6 million total inquiries in 2008. And more than 50,000 businesses have enrolled in the employment verification program since October.
The fact that the Center for American Progress and La Raza are against E-Verify should tell you something.
Sounds like a vicious cycle...the gov't won't enforce the border, yet no one wants employers to check legal status and the cycle goes on and on.
Gov't won't protect our liberties (by protecting our borders) and employers can't be expected to check someone's legal status. The gov't is already so far in to our "business" - with other things employers must "verify", it's pathetic. But checking someone's legal status is a bother?
Scratching head.
Mandatory use of E-verify is the law in AZ. It passed SCOTUS muster, which has scared the hell out of the Chamber of Congress and many liberal groups. Did you read the article? Why do you think the Leftist Center for American Progress is against E-Verify? Why is La Raza and MALDEF against it?
Rep Steve King supports E-Verify as do all of the conservative members of Congress. This is not an individual libery matter but one dealing with the Rule of Law and enforcement.
The latest data show 22.1 million immigrants holding jobs in the U.S. with an estimated 8 million being illegal aliens. By increasing the supply of labor between 1980 and 2000, immigration reduced the average annual earnings of native-born men by an estimated $1,700 or roughly 4 percent. Among natives without a high school education, who roughly correspond to the poorest tenth of the workforce, the estimated impact was even larger, reducing their wages by 7.4 percent. The reduction in earnings occurs regardless of whether the immigrants are legal or illegal, permanent or temporary. It is the presence of additional workers that reduces wages, not their legal status.
The Bureau of Labor statistics for August 2011 show a national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, including 16.7 percent for blacks and 11.3 percent for Hispanics. 25 million Americans are seeking full-time employment. Despite the economic downturn, the U.S. continues to bring in 125,000 new, legal foreign workers a month. This includes new permanent residents (Green Cards) and long-term temporary visas and others who are authorized to take a job. This makes no sense.
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