Republican members of Congress, led by the anti-immigrant "Three Amigos" in the House (Lamar Smith, Elton Gallegly and Steve King) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) are on a mission to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants from the U.S.
They won't exactly say that mass deportation is their goal, but it is. Their latest ploy is to push a massive (and flawed) government identification system onto all American business and all American workers They know this system, called E-Verify, doesn't work. But their zeal for mass deportation trumps common sense.
Over the next few weeks and months, we'll hear Republicans claim unequivocally that E-Verify is the next great solution to our immigration problem. It's not; the real solution is comprehensive immigration reform. So, let's look at some key facts about the GOP's next "great" idea -- mandatory E-Verify for all workers:
Job loss: The Government Accounting Office estimates that 770,000 American workers would lose their jobs due to database errors. Already in FY10, it is estimated that 80,000 Americans unfairly lost their jobs because of E-Verify. That's almost 800,000 jobs in an economy that still hasn't recovered from the recession.
Errors that will affect millions of workers: Republicans hate big government, except e-verify, which has an error rate that will impact millions. Due to the error rate of the program, the government estimates that mandatory E-verify will force between 3 million and 4.1 million American workers to get their records corrected by a government agency or lose their jobs. These errors put an enormous burden on workers and can result in loss of wages, adverse action by employers, and loss of employment. The Government Accounting Office called the process of fixing government database errors "formidable" and SSA reported in 2010 that 3.3 million visitors left a field office without receiving service.
Costs to small business: Making E-Verify mandatory will hurt small businesses, which employ over 50 percent of the U.S. workforce and have generated 64 percent of net new jobs over the last 15 years. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, if E-Verify were mandatory in fiscal year 2010, it would have cost small businesses $2.6 billion.
Destroy American Agriculture: America's agriculture industry relies heavily on undocumented workers. Up to 75 percent of the U.S. agricultural labor force is comprised of unauthorized workers. E-Verify would result in the loss of most of the agricultural workforce. That's why Florida Republican State Senator JD Alexander, a farmer, strongly opposed the state version of E-Verify this year, calling it "flawed.' Put simply, E-Verify will destroy American agriculture, driving up food costs, sending jobs overseas, and forcing us to import more of our produce from foreign sources. Even in this difficult economy, experts agree that Americans are not going to return to the fields to pick crops if we force out 3 million agriculture workers. In addition, according to the Department of Agriculture, for every on-farm job there are about 3.1 "upstream" and "downstream" jobs. That means that deporting an illegal farm worker and sending production overseas eliminates other jobs currently held by Americans.
Loss of tax revenue: Pushing undocumented workers off of the tax rolls would decrease federal tax revenues by at least $17 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That's a bad deal for all taxpayers.
Harsh impact on legal residents and US citizens: Legal permanent residents and naturalized citizens will be hurt the most by this proposal. They are 10 and 32 times more likely than native-born citizens to be falsely identified as "unauthorized" by this program.
High failure rate of over 50%: In addition to all the other problems mentioned, E-Verify doesn't even work that well. By the government's own statistics, E-verify will only identify undocumented workers less than 50% of time. The rest of the time, undocumented workers will use documents that allow them to pass through the verification system.
If Democrats proposed legislation that would cause the loss of almost 800,000 jobs, would force 4 million more workers into an administrative quagmire, would cause an undue burden on small businesses, would nearly wipe out the agricultural workforce, would result in the loss of tax revenue -- and had a failure rate of 50%, Republicans would be apoplectic.
Thought when it comes to immigrant bashing, Republicans, led by Reps. Smith/Gallegly/King, apparently love costly, inefficient, ineffective, intrusive government programs.
Supporters of mandatory E-verify, like those "Three Amigos," make it sound easy and harmless: a simple online check of your social security number and other personal data, and you're done. If you are undocumented, it will be found out and you will not be allowed to work. But nothing the government does on this scale is easy. In fact, the unintended consequences of mandatory E-verify are enormous, and the payoff is less than impressive. Ironically, it's usually the same Republicans who are pushing for mandatory E-Verify who are saying that about large-scale mandatory government programs.
The stark reality is this: our immigration system is badly broken. It will continue to get worse until Republicans in Congress stop pushing their mass deportation fantasy and decide to work with Democrats to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
So, why all this pain and aggravation for a government program that won't even work, will wreak havoc on our economy, and won't address the immigration problem?
Republicans are playing to their hard-core anti-immigrant base. It's that simple. Instead of playing politics with the issue, Republicans in Congress should work with Democrats to pass comprehensive immigration reform that requires undocumented workers to get legal, pay taxes, and undergo background checks on their way to becoming full U.S. citizens. They won't, but they should.
America's Voice and a growing coalition oppose mandatory E-verify without legalization of the entire undocumented workforce. We're tired of failed band-aid approaches, and fed up with "politics as usual" approach to the immigration issue. Republicans have to get over their mass deportation fantasy.
We need our leaders in Washington to work together and pass comprehensive immigration reform. It is the only fiscally responsible, fair, and practical solution.
Cross-posted at America's Voice and Daily Kos.
Follow Frank Sharry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/americasvoice
Most Republicans aren't very principled. I've never thought for one moment they were actually serious about fixing the immigration issue through E-Verify. Besides, it seems like such an invasion of privacy for just the average American. It's kind of creepy!
In fact, your defeat, and that of your allies such as Luis Gutierrez, is one of the most total and complete drubbings I've ever seen in American politics.
Time to look for a new job but frankly, given your record of failure, I sure wouldn't hire ya.
More legal workers means more paid into taxes....more money staying in the local economy (less sent out of the country) More legal workers means the demand for social services will drop. Social security is not being kept afloat by illegal workers right now and likely never will be. Legal workers will still pay into social security and many will never collect half of what they contribute because they won't live long enough. Those same legal workers won't be living off social services if they are employed ending in a net gain for the government and tax payers.
What will your open borders friends have for an argument if they can't claim the enforcement side only wants to target illegals and not employers? Your friends argument that we protect the employers and only pick on the poor errant souls who "only want a better life" and "do the jobs we won't" will be gone if everyone finds out you are protecting criminal employers too.
I guess some people forget you want as many rewards and incentives for illegals as possible while we know all we have to do is remove those rewards and the ease at which they get them for the problem to solve itself - cheaply.
Interesting that the Mexico Lobby would say the system doesn't work because unregistered foreigners have found a way to game it.
A recent piece on MSNBC documented identity thieves stealing the Social Security numbers of children, sometimes before they are even born. When they tracked down some people using these numbers, all of them were Hispanic foreign nationals.
The system DOES work. There are some groups who represent the people of foreign lands who really hope they can convince us not to use it as they would in their countries. Even if it only works half the time, that would still mean 50% less jobs taken by people who are not supposed to be here.
On the one hand, it claims E-verify doesn't work.
On the other, it claims that it is a bad idea because criminal immigrants (I think that's what they mean by undocumented workers) will be driven away.
I conclude that driving away these criminals is not the type of "working" the author has in mind.
E-Verify is not ready for prime time and, without significant upgrades, never will be. Employer after employer quickly finds out that if they want to remain in compliance with the system, they better be ready to invest more time and money than they ever expected. There are fundamental problems with our immigration system. Mandating E-Verify hasn't worked at the state level and will only make matters worse at the federal level.
Immigration compromise 2011: Mandatory E-verify (followed by the implementation of a biometric social security card asap) in exchange for swift legalization of all the otherwise law-abiding illegal aliens plus an improved guest worker program.
(But Sharry, the immigration activists must not blow it like they did in 2007 when they insisted that mass chain migration be allowed. As soon as the undocumented immigrants get papers, they can visit their grown-up siblings, parents etc. in their home countries as often as they choose. Only a spouse and minor children can be allowed to chain migrate.)
No matter how you entice or sugar coat it another amnesty will be fought every step and no concensions will ever happen.
You can call the enforcement side names or claim they are ridged (which they are) but they have good reason.
Amensty afer amnesty has happened since we were promised in 1986 that there would only be one. The same people who made that promise were out front demanding each one after that. The promised enforcement of the 1986 bill never happened, was not funded or was fought so hard that people gave up. Anyone who has any doubt that history would not repeat itself if another amensty was granted must be the some people who believe campaign promises.
I do however agree with the rest of your post - Tamper proof ID and the removal of the daisy chaining incentive must end. But we must also end the other rewards too. As they go so do the illegals. On their own and at no cost.
But wait...if we did that then all these millions of unregistered foreigners would be thrown out on their keisters because Mexico does not tolerate people who take their jobs without permits or try to change their culture.
Maybe they should use E-Verify instead and enforce our own, much more liberal immigration laws.
F & F!
According to a recent ITEP
According to a recent ITEP and IPC Study, households headed up by Illegal Immigrants have Average Household Incomes that are estimated to average out at $36,000 per year. Per the US Census Bureau fully 27% of American Households have Household Incomes that are below this average. This sure supports your contention that those who think Illegal Immigrants do only the dirty, low paying jobs no one else will do are way off base.