Democrats can help pass E-Verify to save American jobs

By Frosty Wooldridge

Economist Ed Rubenstein said five years ago that finishing the Mexico border fence would “cost less than two weeks of  the Iraq War”.

My long time Washington DC friend Don Collins urges democrats to support E-Verify to give American workers a shot at a decent job at a living wage.  That is contrary to Governor Rick Perry pretending to care about Texans where legal and illegal immigrants in the past five years have taken 81 percent of the jobs. (Source: www.cis.org , Dr. Steven Camarata)

Don Collins talks about American employers hiring American workers by engaging E-Verify:

“Let’s not take our eyes off the real objective: to make sure that employers only hire legal aliens and American citizens,” said Collins.  “That, folks, can only come with making E-verify permanent and enforced throughout the USA. There is legitimate disagreement on how best to do this. It revolves around the language of the Lamar Smith bill, which gives the Federal Government the right of preemption over the states to enact laws about employer verification.

“Not being a lawyer, I defer to others on how to work out this dilemma, but I strongly hope that the differences of opinion can be quickly ironed out and the good folks who support patriotic immigration reform can unite.”

This summer, some of the responses from many of our friends about the present language of the Smith bill were as follows:

·         CAPPS: “If Congress is truly concerned about unemployed Americans—the unemployment rate rose to 9.2 percent in June—it will move promptly to pass HR 2164. The Legal Workforce Act would mandate the usage of the E-Verify program by all employers and make available millions of jobs currently held by illegal workers.”

·         But Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) says about Lamar Smith’s bill: “The Supreme Court says state and local laws can be enforced, and now the federal government wants to take that power away. We cannot allow this to happen.”

·         Bay Buchanan has called the present bill as written a “poison pill.”

·         And Phyllis Schlafly writes on her Eagle Forum:

“H.R.2164 preempts the states from requiring use of E-Verify unless employees work for state or local governments. That’s equivalent to giving amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who are currently employed in our country.

“H.R.2164 forbids the states from using their constitutional power to revoke licenses from businesses that hire illegal aliens unless there has been “a showing by the Secretary of Homeland Security, by clear and convincing evidence, that the employer had knowledge that an employee is an unauthorized alien.” There is no likelihood that an Obama Administration will prosecute employers who use E-Verify but fail to fire the illegals, or who contract out part of their workforce to circumvent the system.

“The arguments for Lamar Smith’s H.R.2164 are fallacious. We are told that only the federal government can do anything about the immigration issue, but the recent Supreme Court decision provides the definitive rebuttal to that.”

“An additional way to get employers to obey the law against employing illegal aliens would be to amend H.R.2164 with Rep. Steve King’s (R-IA) proposal to make E-Verify a condition for the employer to take a tax deduction for wages paid, a provision already adopted by Alabama. That would put the incentive on the employer where it belongs, and we would not need prosecutions or deportations.”

“This is a moment of huge opportunity,” said Collins. “Unemployment stands at record highs, likely to go higher. Americans are becoming increasingly aware that the follies of their political leaders in importing over 100 million unneeded aliens since 1965 has turned America’s melting pot into a bifurcated hourglass, with many more poor, a far smaller Middle Class, and the richest elites in our history.

“With one in six Americans in poverty and 25% of our kids going hungry, I bet a lot of Americans of both parties can see firsthand what the situation has become. But I am sorry to say that, on to immigration enforcement, I would rather trust the states than the Obama administration. I can only hope this is worked out soon.”

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Donald A. Collins is a long-time board member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s (FAIR). He writes for www.Vdare.com