At a time when Congress should be focusing on creating jobs, House Republicans -- led by the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith -- are pushing to make E-Verify, the deeply flawed immigrant worker data base, mandatory. It's bad enough that E-Verify doesn't work, making it mandatory just makes matter worse -- and does nothing to address the single most important challenge before Congress today: job creation.
By forcing seven million employers in the U.S. to invest, not in expanding their businesses, but instead in plugging into an error-prone government database, E-Verify is a job-killing bill that we cannot afford at this time. Expanding and imposing a deeply flawed, bureaucratic system will not create jobs. Forcing every employer in the country to check every single worker's legal status will not create more jobs. Subjecting millions of workers, including U.S. citizens, to discrimination and potentially unfair firings will not help create good jobs. The truth is that this Republican attempt to vilify hardworking people will only push undocumented workers further into the shadows, do nothing to fix our broken immigration system and saddle employers with needless costs at a time when we need them to invest in our economy.
No matter how you slice it, Lamar Smith's mandatory E-Verify will do more economic harm than good. We need Congress to focus on solving our economic crisis, not to make it worse by passing partisan, job-killing legislation. To do this, we need a plan to create jobs and to fix our broken immigration system. If we don't do that first, we end up expanding the underground economy, resulting in more workers being paid under the table and kept off the books. More than $17 billion in tax revenues could be lost if workers fall off the tax rolls and into the cash economy driven by unscrupulous tax-cheating employers.
Our elected officials need to understand that the great American middle class wasn't something that just happened. It was built, brick by brick. It was built by soldiers returning from war and a government that took our obligation to them seriously, by giving them a shot at a college education. It was built by businesses that were ready to hire hardworking men and women and paid fair wages for a hard day's work. It was built by immigrants who came from all over the world looking for a better life and the American Dream.
With millions of Americans out of work, Congressional Republicans are dangerously off-track with this initiative to impose a flawed bureaucratic system that could cost nearly a million workers their jobs.
There is a better way to create jobs than letting Congressional Republicans play to the anti-immigrant crowd for their own political gain by pushing E-Verify. A better way starts with helping businesses to invest their money wisely in creating jobs and not foolishly loading them down with the onerous costs of putting a flawed system into place. And this better way is helped by reforming our immigration system to require undocumented immigrants to register, pay fines, learn English, thereby making them full participants in our economic recovery. Putting job creation first means sending job-killing bills like E-Verify straight to the end of the line.
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"The latest comprehensive review of E-Verify is awaiting final approval. Sources state that the error rates are down significantly from the numbers cited below — by as much as half of a percentage point, which is a serious improvement considering how small the error rates were in 2007. In addition, narrow cases of false positives and false negatives are under review at a USCIS fraud unit to assure the program continues to improve.
Some quick facts:
Overall accuracy of E-Verify as of first half of 2007: 99.5 percentEmployees authorized within the first 24 hours as of first half of 2007: 94.2 percent
93 percent are verified instantly — within five seconds.1.2 percent are verified after an electronic, 24-hour USCIS check without any notification to the employee."
http://www.cis.org/Everify
Rep. Lamar Smith -- are pushing to make E-Verify nationwide but must be amendmented. Smith's bill was wrote by big businesses after the SC ok'ed AZ's E Verify law in answer to it.
Lamar Smiths E-Verify /H.R. 2164 Must Be Amended Before Passage.
"H.R. 2164 pre-empts 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."
http://stevebukovitz.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/lamar-smiths-e-verify-h-r-2164-must-be-amended-before-passage/
Yes, the American middle class developed slowly by citizens and legal aliens who played by the rules and not by those who, as their first act upon entering the US, broke the law.
Assume that the system isn’t perfect. Let’s fix it so it is as good as it can be. If errors are made, let’s correct them. Undocumented workers cost us more than indicated just by lost jobs. They use resources in our schools, hospitals, etc. and all legal citizens pay for those resources.
It is about time that the self-serving politicians give up on trying to legalize all those who have entered this country as criminals by violating our laws. (I would be in favor of a comprehensive immigration plan to resolve the illegal alien issue ONCE our border has been secured). I am all in favor of immigrants wanting to enter the United States IF they come in through the “front door” and become productive citizens.
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You obviously have a very one eyed view of the issue. Any system that does not pay a living wage is patently unsustainable. As has been shown in the EU, illegal immigration absolueltly does not create jobs, in fact quite the opposite.
Worse still, illegal immigration puts pressure on the most vulnerable in our society and I for one and absolutely staggered that unions of all people should "choose" not to see this (because I can't imagine that they and their members do not see the effects first hand) and actively take this issue up! the mentality that supports it actually hurts us by locking us into a never ending human ponzi scheme that is predicated on a never ending supply of illegal slaves and cannot but hurt the illegals the worst. Or are the accusations true that unions care more about membership numbers and power than the welfare and prospects of their members?
Taking care of illegal immigeration has to be a priority in order to right the ship and bring sanity back to the job market. I absolutely agree that jobs should be a prime focus but cannot be the only focus. Simultaneously the government should be working to effect economic changes that will make us more competitive and bring jobs back onshore.
The reason that this union (of just a few in this country) support amnesty is because they have many members who are illegals. The unions who support this tactic are ones who have membership in those fields that have high numbers of illegal workers.
The other issue is union leadership is ONLY concerned anymore with dues. The more dues paying members it has the happier the leadership is. The rank and file are hurt but they don't care. The rank and file now have lots more competition and less opportunity to go somewhere else but they don't care.
I say this as a 30+ year union member, shop steward for ten years and I have walked the picket line two times. I doubt Mr Fishman can say he had to go without a job a month after getting married, so he could support his fellow union members walking the line.
Don't confuse the business of unions (leadership and money) with the workers who just want to do their job and be treated decent.
Faved and fanned long ago voyager!