Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles
Republicans
GOP Candidates Ignore Florida’s Diversifying Latino Population
04 days ago
Campaigning in Florida this month, GOP Presidential candidates continued to display a general lack of understanding of the state’s diversifying Latino population. While it’s well-documented that the Cuban-American population is currently a strong political force, the emerging story in Florida is that the state’s future voting population will become increasingly Latino, but less Cuban.
While it’s normal for political candidates to pander to today’s registered voters, they undermine the long-term electoral prospects of their party when they fail to recognize Florida’s changing demographics. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau reveal that increasing numbers of Florida’s children are non-Cuban Latinos. Overall, Latinos make up 26% of persons under age 18.
More striking, however—given Florida’s long association with Cuban immigration—is that the Cuban-origin portion of the Latino population is shrinking when you look at the youngest Floridians.
While Cubans are a majority of Florida Latinos over age 70, every Latino age group below 70 is becoming increasingly non-Cuban. Cubans are more than half (54%) of Florida Latinos aged 65 and over, but they are only 22% of Latino children in the state. Simply put, the Cuban population is getting older while a younger, non-Cuban Latino population continues to grow.
In fact, Cubans today are a minority of all Florida Latinos. The state’s Latino population is one of the most diverse in the nation: 29% Cuban, 20% Puerto Rican, 17% South American, 15% Mexican, 11% Central American, and 9% of other Latino origins.
Candidates and the party they represent are focusing on elections in Florida, not the future electorate. In doing so they are risking the long-term success of their party. The increasingly diverse Latino community in Florida is only going to be receptive to rhetoric and immigration policies that benefit all Latinos.
Photo by heacphotos.
Advocates Call Romney’s Relationship with Anti-Immigrant Hawk “Political Suicide”
02 weeks ago
As if Mitt Romney’s repeated promise to veto the DREAM Act wasn’t alienating enough, advocates warn that Romney’s continued relationship with famed anti-immigrant hawk Kris Kobach is killing future support from Latino voters, especially in key states like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Florida. Kobach, co-author of Arizona and Alabama’s extreme immigration enforcement laws, appeared in South Carolina Monday night to spin for the Romney campaign following the GOP debate.
Following Kobach’s endorsement of Gov. Mitt Romney last week, the Romney campaign issued a statement accepting Kobach’s endorsement and supporting his leadership on extreme immigration enforcement last in Arizona and South Carolina. Now, however, with Kobach actually appearing on Romney’s campaign trail, advocates say Kobach will damage Romney’s image among Latino voters.
Dee Dee Garcia Blase of the grassroots Republican Latino group Somos Republicans said “Romney committed political suicide” when he welcomed Kobach’s endorsement. Outspoken immigration advocate Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) called Kobach’s affiliation with the Romney campaign “appalling” and characterized Kobach as the “Dark Lord of the anti-immigration movement” on a teleconference. And earlier this month, Hispanic Leadership Fund’s Mario Lopez said Romney’s approach to immigration was hurting him as a candidate and the Republican party in general.
As previously reported by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Kris Kobach has built a long and varied career out of attacking immigrants—first in the Bush Administration targeting legal immigrants from Muslim and Arab countries and later as the architect of city ordinances and state laws targeting unauthorized, mostly Latino immigrants.
But the addition of Kobach to Romney’s campaign is just the latest in Romney’s hard line on immigration. Romney again indicated yesterday that he would veto the DREAM Act should it come up in Congress, arguing that “aiding those eligible under the DREAM Act”—a bill that puts undocumented students who were brought here by their parents on a path towards citizenship—“would only encourage more people to enter the country without documentation.”
Appearing tough on immigration may not hurt Romney during the GOP primary, but come general election time, many wonder how Romney plans to win the Latino vote. Matt Barreto of the University of Washington said that Romney will not win the presidency without at least 40% of the Latino vote, a vote Congressman Luis Gutierrez believes Romney will not receive given his current approach to immigration.
“There is no route to the White House that does not go through a Latino neighborhood. Any winner in either party needs a significant proportion of Latino voters. When you say you want millions of us to leave the country … we will vote against you.”
When it comes to immigration, American voters have established that they want solutions not smears. Politicians, however, continue to read from a different playbook written by a narrow group of voters and commentators.
Photo by Gage Skidmore.
As Iowa Caucuses Approach, Signatories of Iowa Compact Hope to Reframe Immigration Debate
01 month ago
Exhausted by the base immigration rhetoric prevalent in the GOP presidential debate, a group of concerned Iowans is seeking to reframe the issue in anticipation of the Iowa Caucuses next month. Last week, business, faith and city leaders in Iowa signed the Iowa Compact—a list of five principles meant to guide how people discuss immigration. Signatories of the compact, which is modeled after Utah and Indiana’s Compact, urged politicians “to stop playing politics on the issue” and said that state level fixes, like enforcement-only legislation, do “not address the root problem of immigration” but instead hurts economies and communities.
Similar to other compacts, the Iowa Compact includes five guiding principles: 1) Immigration is a federal issues; 2) Local law enforcement needs to focus on serious crimes and avoid policies with negative economic and humanitarian consequences; 3) Immigration policies should help families stay together: 4) Immigrants are beneficial to Iowa’s economy; and 5) Iowa needs to welcome immigrants.
And with the Republican primary caucuses less than a month away, Compact signatories hope GOP presidential candidates take notice. Lori Chesser, chairwoman of the Iowa Immigration Education Coalition, believes “there has not been enough thoughtful discussion in the debates” thus far. The mayor of Perry, Iowa, Jay Pattee, agrees:
During the Republican presidential primary season, the rhetoric on immigration has reached a new low. This type of debate is not only extreme and divisive, but it serves as a distraction from a genuine policy debate.
Other signatories, like those in the business and law enforcement community, also want to send the message that Congress’s inability to reform our broken immigration system is hurting state economies and what’s worse, has given rise to enforcement-only immigration laws which put law enforcement officers at odds with communities.
According to Perry, Iowa’s police chief Dan Brickman, “the lack of federal action on immigration reform has put his officers in an awkward spot at a time when they can’t afford to take on additional responsibilities or alienate their residents.” Nearly 40% of Perry’s population is Hispanic.
Martha Willits, chief executive of the Greater Des Moines Partnership, said foreign-born workers are crucial to Iowa’s economy since, according to the group, the state’s primary population growth comes from minorities.
We know from our business partners that work force is a critical issue, particularly finding workers with the right skills … We want to keep foreign-born students who are trained at our universities and intern in our businesses. But we can’t because of our makeshift laws. We need comprehensive reform.
Other signatories include the CEO of Banker’s Trust, the oldest and largest independently owned bank in Iowa, and the Iowa Nursery and Landscape Association, who relies on immigrants for workers.
Hopefully, communities across the U.S. will realize that immigrants are vital to their state’s economic prosperity and enact policies that welcome them, like in Dayton, Ohio, rather than bash them in debates and drive them from the state through anti-immigrant legislation.
Polls Reveal Even Conservative Voters Favor Path to Legal Status for Unauthorized Immigrants
01 month ago
Immigration is a hot issue in the GOP primary debates, complete with extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric and far-fetched policy proposals. Michele Bachman, for example, promised to deport every undocumented immigrant in the country—a costly and unworkable task. And she’s not the only one. Herman Cain recently “joked” that he would electrify the border fence as a deterrent for unauthorized crossers. But Republican presidential candidates have it wrong when it comes to anti-immigrant rhetoric and their base. Recent polls suggest that a majority of conservative voters actually favor a path to legal status for unauthorized immigrants. In fact, several polls found that the majority of Americans prefer a path to legalization for unauthorized immigrants currently in the U.S.
A recent poll conducted by the United Technologies and the National Journal Congressional Connection found that 39% of respondents (the largest group), when asked what the government should do about undocumented immigrants in the U.S., said that the United States should “deport some, but allow those who have been here for many years and have broken no other laws to stay here legally.” And when broken down along party lines, the majority of Republicans surveyed agreed.
While 33% of Republicans supported deporting all undocumented immigrants, 43% favored allowing “long-term illegal immigrants who have not broken any other law to remain.” 19% of Republicans wanted to allow all undocumented immigrants to be able to stay, compared to 32% of Democrats.
Another poll released by Pew Research Center also found Republican support for a path to legalization, albeit from a younger swath of voters. Pew’s poll found that 42% of Republicans under age 30 favored a path to citizenship if coupled with tougher enforcement measures.In contrast, 57% of older Republicans 65 years and older favored “border security and stricter enforcement alone” while 24% favored “a dual approach that would include a path to citizenship.”
And finally, a poll conducted by the Partnership for a New American Economy found that a plurality of Republicans likely to attend the Iowa caucuses support expanding legal immigration if it supports the creation of jobs. The poll found:
- 72% are open to allowing foreign-born students educated in the U.S. to enter the workforce after graduation
- 64% are open to streamlining the process for employers to hire the seasonal and permanent employees they need when Americans are not filling vacant jobs
- 66% are open to increasing opportunities for high-skilled legal immigrants to enter the U.S. workforce
- 71% are open to increasing opportunities for entrepreneurs from other countries to move to the U.S. to start a business here.
According to Republican strategist John Stineman, “there is clearly an appetite for working to solve problems with our legal immigration system and Iowa Republicans make the connection that doing so can help grow our economy.”
And that appetite isn’t just among conservative voters. Poll after poll demonstrates that the American public embraces the need for common sense solutions to our immigration problems as wells as the important role immigrants play in our economy. Perhaps it’s time for GOP Presidential candidates to drop the inflamed rhetoric and get on board with the rest of America.
Remembering the Benefits of IRCA, 25 Years Later
02 months ago
Twenty five years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), an immigration reform bill which, despite a contentious debate, managed to pass a Republican Senate and a Democratic House. In fact, Reagan called the immigration bill one of the “most difficult legislative undertakings of recent memory” but one that “further generations of Americans” would “be thankful for.” And Reagan wasn’t wrong. Despite criticisms from both restrictionists and advocates that IRCA failed to address future waves of immigration, the benefits of IRCA—as well as the bipartisan support needed to pass it—should give our current congressional leaders something to think about.
Signed in November 1986, IRCA required all persons to show authorization to work in the U.S., increased border enforcement, and created a legalization program for undocumented immigrants who met eligibility requirements. While critics complain that IRCA failed to prevent future waves of unauthorized immigration, they often forget the important things IRCA accomplished.
IRCA legalized approximately 3 million immigrants who met strict eligibility requirements, 1.3 million of whom legalized under the special agricultural legalization program. Obtaining legal status allowed unauthorized immigrants to improve their lives and contribute even more to the U.S. economy.
According to research by Rob Paral, between 1990 and 2006, the educational attainment of IRCA immigrants increased substantially, their poverty rates fell dramatically, and their home ownership rates improved tremendously. Once legalized, their real wages rose and many of them moved into managerial positions.
The law also showed how legalization, enforcement, and visa reform must work together to create a better immigration system. Unfortunately, the visa reforms were limited to agricultural workers, so any new legislation would need to go further. The basic elements of balanced immigration reform, however, were included in IRCA.
One of the most important lessons from IRCA was the bipartisan cooperation needed to pass it. According to President Reagan:
[IRCA has] truly been a bipartisan effort, with this administration and the allies of immigration reform in Congress, of both parties, working together to accomplish these critically important reforms. Future generations of Americans will be thankful for our efforts to humanely regain control of our borders and thereby preserve the value of one of the most sacred possessions of our people: American citizenship.
If Americans—Democrats and Republicans—could come together in 1986 to pass IRCA, surely Congressional leaders can join forces to pass necessary reforms again. Our immigration crisis is far too dire to not even try.
Photo by Gage Skidmore.
Dishonest Data on Immigration Cripples Honest Debate and Sensible Lawmaking
03 months ago
For years, data produced by restrictionist, anti-immigrant advocacy groups have permeated politics and policy. Today is no different. What’s alarming, however, is the ease with which politicians and lawmakers are using this dishonest data to support their restrictive positions on immigration.
Take the recent passage of HB 56 in Alabama. Sponsors of the bill are using flawed data produced by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) to defend the passage of the bill. Using FAIR’s numbers, they claim unauthorized immigrants in Alabama use public services to the tune of $280 million a year. In the media, these supporters fail (as does the media reporting on it) to cite where the numbers come from. Passing them off as “official” state data, the average person would assume that these numbers were crunched by Alabama’s own legislature or government agencies. However, this is simply not the case. In fact, Alabama legislators failed to produce a fiscal note enumerating the fiscal impacts of HB 56, so the only fiscal justification they had for this bill was flawed data from FAIR.
Strikingly, during the last few debates among GOP presidential aspirants, more than one candidate referenced data by FAIR and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), another extreme anti-immigrant research group. Michele Bachmann recently quoted FAIR data claiming the costs of unauthorized immigration to the U.S. were $113 billion dollars per year, with $82 billion being shouldered by states. This is the same study Alabama officials pulled their state data from and passed off as official data.
Explaining the basic flaws in FAIR’s reporting is actually simple: they exaggerate the costs associated with unauthorized immigrants while vastly undercounting their contributions. What’s most appalling about their “economic” analysis is how they include the costs of educating the U.S.-born children of immigrants and never credit back the productivity of these children when they grow into contributing adult citizens. FAIR also adds unsubstantiated costs derived from unsupported assumptions about the children of unauthorized immigrants. For example, FAIR assumes all children of unauthorized immigrants are using ESL programs and free and reduced price lunch programs. Finally, to exaggerate the costs as much as possible, FAIR vastly underestimates the contributions that immigrants make as consumers, workers, and taxpayers. This formula allows FAIR to make it look as if unauthorized immigrants cost more than they contribute.
Another recent reference to restrictionist data came from Mitt Romney and his staff, who quoted a CIS study which claims almost half the jobs created in Texas under Governor Perry went to unauthorized workers. Fortunately, these numbers were challenged by FactCheck.org, which noted that the report has been debunked in the Dallas Morning News by Pia Orrenius, an economist and immigration expert at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas—and by a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation who wrote an analysis critical of the CIS study.
No one is arguing that the drastic increase in unauthorized immigration over the past two decades is not an appropriate debate topic or that policy changes aren’t needed. However, we will never achieve real solutions unless we demand intellectual honesty, rather than pandering and platitudes, in debates on immigration. The data and research put forth by anti-immigrant groups, whose only solution is to deport them all, cannot be the basis for honest policymaking or policy discussion.
Photo by jypsygen.
On Immigration, Some GOP Candidates Prefer Hostile Rhetoric to Policy Solutions
03 months ago
Over the weekend, Republican presidential hopefuls Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann made it clear that they were willing to increase their anti-immigration rhetoric in order to court voters. In the process, both confused the right to free speech with the responsibility of free speech, turning what should have been a debate on immigration policy into cheap and insensitive anti-immigrant rhetoric.
At rallies in Tennessee on Saturday, Herman Cain proposed that we “build an electrified fence” to keep out undocumented immigrants, and later, that we use “real guns and real bullets” to kill those people seeking to cross illegally. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Cain defended his insensitive comments by claiming that it’s “insensitive for [undocumented immigrants] to be killing our citizens, killing our border agents.” The next day, Cain said he was “only joking,” and that America needed a sense of humor.
Michele Bachmann, relying on discredited numbers from an immigration restrictionist group, told an Iowa audience that we need to build a border fence for matters of economic and national security, that illegal immigrants today weren’t like her Norwegian forebears who promised to protect the Constitution, and that it was time to take a stand for good old fashioned American values—implying that today’s immigrants don’t have that same regard for American values and are the lesser for it.
Bachmann insulated her listeners from any discomfort by saying that she was talking about policy, not people.
“It’s OK to talk about this issue,” said Bachmannn. “Some say it’s not OK to talk about this subject because that somehow means we are prejudiced or bigoted or biased against Hispanics. That’s not what I hear form the people of Iowa. They are tired of paying for other people.”
But a legitimate policy issue—what to do about illegal immigration—doesn’t mean that you can say anything you like. It’s not “OK” to talk about an issue in a way that inflames prejudice or suggests that human life is cheap. It’s not “OK” to use blatantly misleading facts to scare people into feeling like their very lives or livelihoods are threatened.
In other words, the Bachmann/Cain remarks of the weekend were just the latest example in how degraded the debate over immigration has become. It may be wishful thinking to say that candidates for public office have a responsibility to do more than pander to the lowest common denominator, but they do. And they have a responsibility not to feed anti-immigrant sentiment by justifying their remarks as either a joke or a defense of American values.
GOP Candidates Distort Truth on In-State Tuition for Unauthorized Students
04 months ago
Texas Governor Rick Perry, a candidate in the Republican presidential primaries, has been taking a lot of conservative heat lately over his support for the “Texas DREAM Act.” That bill, which Perry signed into law in 2001, allows young unauthorized Texans who came to this country as children to qualify for in-state tuition in state colleges and universities in the same way as their lawfully present peers. Perry says that supporting the bill was an act of mercy towards unauthorized youth who had no say in the decision of their parents to come to the United States without permission. He also says that it is in the best interest of the state to educate unauthorized children rather than consigning them to the margins of society.
Perry’s opponents disagree. They mischaracterize in-state tuition for unauthorized immigrants, claiming that it comes at the expense of native-born students. Fellow presidential contender Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, has claimed that the Texas bill gave every unauthorized student who benefitted from it an unfair in-state tuition “discount” of nearly $100,000 over the course of four years spent at the University of Texas.
Mr. Romney could use a little schooling on the issue of in-state tuition laws. Specifically, there are four important points to remember:
- Unauthorized immigrants who want to go to an in-state college are required to pay the out-of-state or international-student tuition rates, which can be considerably higher than the in-state rate. Mitt Romney mischaracterizes an in-state tuition law as an unfair advantage given to unauthorized students who have actually lived in the state for years and acquired their education there. In reality, the law only gives those who qualify the option of paying in-state tuition rates to attend in-state colleges or universities (and, in some cases, only community colleges).
- The number of students who are eligible for and choose to utilize the tuition benefit open to them is very low. In the case of Texas, only 9,062 students actually benefited from the Texas DREAM Act in fall 2007. This amounted to eight-tenths of one percent of all students in the state’s public colleges and universities.
- Bills granting in-state tuition to qualified unauthorized students are not a fiscal burden. They draw tuition-paying students into the educational system who otherwise would not be there. According to fiscal notes from the state legislatures of Colorado and California, for instance, in-state tuition bills are a fiscal wash. That is, the amount of new revenue generated from having more students enrolled in colleges and universities, and paying in-state tuition, offsets the loss of revenue from having fewer students paying higher, non-resident tuition rates.
- In-state tuition for unauthorized youth encourages more students to finish high school and get a higher education. In a report released earlier this year, the Latino Policy Institute at Roger Williams University found that “in-state tuition is correlated with a 14% decrease in high school dropouts among non-citizen Latinos.” Moreover, “in-state tuition results in a 31% increase in non-citizen enrollment in institutes of higher education.” And Texas could use a few more college graduates. A report from the Lumina Foundation for Education found that “33 percent of the state’s 12.6 million working-age adults (25-64 years old) hold at least a two-year degree, according to 2008 Census data.” That is significantly lower than the national average of 37.9 percent.
In-state tuition bills like the Texas DREAM Act are not a fiscal burden on the state treasury, do not harm native-born students, and do not provide an unfair advantage to the small number of unauthorized students who qualify.
It is not only Rick Perry who recognizes the wisdom of educating unauthorized students rather than punishing them. In-state tuition laws have been implemented in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Utah, and Washington. The experience of these states is that in-state tuition laws have not drained state budgets and have not crowded out native-born students who want to attend college.
Providing in-state tuition is the government’s recognition that kids who have already been educated in the state should be able to complete that education. The government’s motivation is simple: better-educated youth have the potential to become more productive contributors to the state’s economy. Politicians who mischaracterize in-state tuition as giving an unfair advantage to unauthorized students either misunderstand the facts or don’t care about facts in the first place.
Photo by IowaPolitics.com.
Despite Lamar Smith’s Claims, E-Verify Is Not a Jobs Bill
04 months ago
BY TYLER MORAN, NATIONAL IMMIGRATION LAW CENTER
While Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) promises that his mandatory E-Verify legislation (HR 2885) is a jobs creation bill, the mark-up of the bill in the House Judiciary Committee last week proved that it is anything but. Though the bill passed the committee by a 22-13 party line vote, the debate in committee and amendments offered make it crystal clear the bill would actually yield job losses. The debate leading up to the committee mark up also shows just how fractured conservatives have become on this issue—and much of it focuses on concerns over jobs. In fact, an unlikely coalition of progressive and conservative organizations joined together to oppose the bill, turning a host of job arguments upside down.
The debate over whether E-verify promotes jobs or causes job losses took at least three forms during the committee mark-up. The first type of argument, proposed by die-hard restrictionists like Smith and Rep. Steve King (R-IA), actually made it more likely that workers will lose their jobs before they even start their first day of work. Smith offered a technical correction to his bill ensuring that employers can screen workers before their first day of work, despite ample evidence from a government-funded study that 33 percent of lawful workers who are currently illegally prescreened and found to have a database error are not offered a job. The study also found that 47 percent of workers who were not offered a job because of prescreening couldn’t find a new job for two months or longer.
This amendment passed, ensuring that thousands of workers who were offered a job will go back to the unemployment line. Rep. King also offered an amendment to allow employers to use E-Verify to selectively screen workers, which will result in even more workers losing their jobs. This amendment was tabled.
The second kind of argument around jobs came from Rep. Lungren (R-CA) who offered two amendments which would have created a new guestworker program that is uncapped and provides no labor protections for workers. Stunningly, the amendment includes no relief for the one million undocumented farmworkers currently working in our fields. Instead, Rep. Lungren was proposing to bring hundreds of thousands of temporary guestworkers to replace American farmworkers. These amendments were ruled out of order on procedural grounds, so never got a vote.
The most significant amendment of the day that highlighted the hypocrisy of Rep. Smith’s jobs argument was offered by Rep. Harold Berman (D-CA). Berman’s amendment eliminated the part of Smith’s bill that exempted agricultural workers from E-Verify requirements who return to an employer they have worked for in the past. This carve out essentially acknowledges the huge role that undocumented workers play in our economy and that without them, industries like agriculture would be decimated. In states like Georgia where E-Verify is mandatory, 11,000 farm jobs are currently unfilled.
Democrats called Republicans on their game by calling this carve out an “amnesty” for growers and pointed out the hypocrisy of not exempting workers from other industries with a large number of undocumented workers. Five Republicans voted with Democrats to pass the amendment.
In other words, Chairman Smith may claim this is a jobs bill, but the hours and hours of committee mark up proved the opposite. Provisions to “strengthen” the bill offered by immigration restrictionists either made it easier to fire any employee or to bring in new, unprotected guestworkers to compete for jobs. And the breaking of ranks on the issue of stripping out the agriculture exception shows that politicians on both sides of the aisle aren’t buying the jobs argument—because employers know that they will lose, rather than gain jobs from this bill—particularly in agriculture.
Republican leadership doesn’t seem to be buying the jobs argument either. When asked about the fate of the bill, one Republican aide commented that although the bill has not yet been scheduled for a vote before the full House, the House “will be focusing on our pro-growth agenda to remove harmful regulations that are increasing uncertainty and preventing economic growth and job creation.” Really? Because if that’s the case, this bill should never see the light of day on the House floor.
Photo by daoro.
Mandatory E-Verify: An Enforcement Proposal Even Conservatives Don’t Like
04 months ago
Rep. Lamar Smith may find himself whistling in the wind this week as members of his own party continue to blast his E-Verify proposal. Smith’s bill, The “Legal Workforce Act” H.R. 2885, which continues to get marked up this week by the House Judiciary Committee, would make E-Verify mandatory nationwide. Conservative lawmakers, Tea Partiers, and Libertarians, however, fear that E-Verify—a electronic system that allows employers to verify work eligibility by checking employee data against Social Security Administration records—will violate civil liberties, hurt small businesses, and destroy the agriculture industry which relies heavily on undocumented labor.
Last week, Republican Congressman Dan Lungren of California said mandatory E-Verify would decimate California’s agricultural industry:
“The bill before us does not recognize the demonstrated need for temporary foreign workers in agriculture. Now, that might not be politically correct to say, but it happens to be a fact,” Lofgren said. “I know we are only one state, but we are the largest agricultural state in the Union.
“If we do not recognize the demonstrated need for foreign workers – and I am talking about temporary foreign workers in our agricultural fields – we are kidding ourselves,” he added. “Anybody who suggests that we can do it with American workers, with all due respect, does not understand agriculture in America today.”
Even Tea Party groups—who support restrictive immigration laws like Arizona’s SB 1070—believe mandatory E-Verify threatens the Constitution, violates individuals’ right to work and creates a “de facto national I.D. system” for American citizens. In a letter to Congress last week, they wrote:
The dangerous and intrusive precedent set by the bill opens the floodgate of additional incursive and contentious employment verification hurdles. Mission creep is the signature of all bureaucracies.
After enactment of the Legal Workforce Act, employers could soon be required to verify whether employees are delinquent in the payment of federal, state, or local taxes, in compliance with child support or alimony decrees, on a terrorist watch list, or convicted or even accused of crime.
Others critics complain that E-Verify is too expensive, not accurate and will likely drive the undocumented immigrants further into the underground economy. For example, Bloomberg Government, a research organization, estimates that mandatory E-Verify would cost small businesses—which account for 99.7% of all employers—a whopping $2.6 billion a year. Another research group estimated that roughly 770,000 U.S. citizen and work-authorized immigrants would likely lose their job due mandatory E-Verify. None of this makes E-Verify sound like the “jobs bill” Mr. Smith described a few months ago.
Clearly, Lamar Smith has a lot of explaining to do—not just to fellow immigration restrictionists like Rep. Steve King (R-IA) who said he had “concerns” about the bill—but to members of his own party who may find it difficult to support this bill and still claim to protect the interests of small business and the American worker.
Photo by James R. Martin.