Dallas-Fort Worth Immigration Lawyer

Here's an interesting debate about last-minute changes to the H-2A agricultural worker program proposed by the Bush administration. As expected, employers who would benefit from the changes are in favor, and American farm workers who might be harmed are opposed. These are excerpts from an article in the Dallas Morning News:

Farm worker advocates and opponents of illegal immigration are blasting one of President George W. Bush's "midnight regulations" that will make it easier for agricultural employers to hire foreign workers.

They say the changes undermine worker protections, exploit immigrants and set wage levels so low that domestic workers cannot compete with foreign workers for jobs.

The regulation, which makes changes in the U.S. Labor Department's H-2A Temporary Agriculture Worker Program, allows agricultural employers to hire temporary foreign workers if not enough domestic workers are able or willing to fill farm jobs.

The changes also promise to reduce paperwork and make processing deadlines more efficient.

In fiscal 2008, the U.S. State Department issued more than 64,000 H-2A visas, a 26 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. Since 2003, the number of temporary agricultural worker visas has steadily increased, according to a department spokeswoman.

But the number of workers covered by H-2A visas is only a small segment of a larger farm worker contingent that's close to 1.6 million, more than 80 percent of whom are foreign-born, said Craig Regelbrugge of the American Nursery and Landscape Association. Of those foreign-born workers, nearly three-quarters are unauthorized, he said.

Labor Department officials say the changes are needed to provide agricultural employers with workers in a timely fashion so that crops can be harvested.

But Bruce Goldstein of the Washington, D.C.-based Farmworker Justice Fund said the four-tier wage structure is not a reliable standard because the survey it relies on doesn't study farms, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As a result, he said, it sets farm worker wages too low and makes it hard for the workers to earn a living wage.

Additionally, Goldstein said, the new regulations weaken worker protections because employers can now claim they have fulfilled the program's requirements instead of having to provide evidence of their compliance before their visa requests are approved.

"These seem typical of the Bush administration policies, where whatever employers want, that's what we're going to give them," said Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a nonpartisan advocacy group that seeks to reduce illegal immigration.

Mehlman said that by continuously adding foreign workers to their employment rolls and paying them according to the prevailing wage, employers undercut the need for domestic workers by relying on a steady stream of immigrants who can be easily replaced if they complain. Employers' actions also cap wages at such low rates that Americans can't compete for agricultural jobs.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 11:32 AM | Permalink

That's the premise behind the Web site WeHireAliens.com. You can go there and report any business you suspect hires illegal aliens. You need not have any evidence at all, and you certainly don't have to leave your name or reason for reporting the business.

The site was the subject of a recent article in the Dallas Morning News. Here are excerpts:

Hundreds of Texas employers, and thousands around the nation, have inspired Internet publicity they didn't court: They're accused of hiring illegal immigrants.

A Web site, www.wehirealiens.com, lists companies from Pilgrim's Pride to Swift & Co. as "alleged" employers of illegal immigrants. Both those food companies have had employees at their Texas operations arrested for immigration violations and document fraud, but many other companies listed on the site have not.

And that has employers angry that the founders of the Southern California-based site publicly accuse them of breaking laws. The founders contend they established the site in 2004 in frustration over what they call ineffective action by the federal government. There are now nearly 5,000 "illegal employers" listed from nearly every state.

The Web site reflects one more way that technology is amplifying the national debate over illegal immigration. Scores of sites have gone up in the last few years to defend, to denigrate, and to discuss civilly the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.

The federal government won't divulge its tipsters. "ICE doesn't confirm special sources, but we use various sources to obtain intelligence," said Carl Rusnok, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas. "Then we determine if follow-up action is appropriate."

ICE runs its own hotline – 1-866-DHS-2ICE – and information there keeps the Department of Homeland Security agency very busy, Mr. Rusnok added. Mr. Mrochek said they send information to ICE, the FBI and the Social Security Administration. He also said that information is vetted and less than a third of the complaints they receive are actually posted on the Web site.

Dallas-based La Madeleine Bakery, Cafe and Bistro is also listed on the site. Officials at the privately owned restaurant chain said they have tried to get the chain's name removed from the site and that they comply with federal immigration laws. "It would appear that they never remove these postings and do not verify if the allegations are true," said CEO Mike Shumsky. "This, as you might expect, is concerning."

Posted by Bob Kraft at 11:21 AM | Permalink

An article today in the Dallas Morning News details the opinions of the owner of Pilgrim's Pride poultry company regarding our immigration laws.Here are excerpts:

Poultry mogul Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim on Monday called for an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws.

"We have to rise up and do something," the 80-year-old co-founder of Pilgrim's Pride Corp. said at a gathering of Texas employers. "Every individual, all 300 million of us, every man, woman and child, is touched by this issue. We all have to have food. We all have to have shelter. And America doesn't have the labor to support the economy."

More than 300 workers at Pilgrim's Pride's plants in Mount Pleasant, Texas, and four other locations were arrested in April by immigration officers as part of an investigation into identity fraud. The sweep illustrated a switch in tactics in which the government uses criminal law to prosecute illegal immigrants. In that law enforcement action, Pilgrim's Pride, based in Pittsburg, Texas, wasn't charged.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 11:44 AM | Permalink

That's not simply my opinion, but the title of a recent Dallas Morning News editorial. If we don't make major changes to our immigration laws soon we will fall behind (some would say further behind) the rest of the industrialized world in technical research and engineering. Here is the editorial:

When it comes to U.S. exports, big-ticket items like cars and aircraft come to mind. But America's No. 1 export is actually the tiny semiconductor. It's what creates thousands of jobs here and helps make Texas the top exporting state in the country.

Other nations are doing their best to take over our lead. They're trying to lure away the scholars, scientists and engineers whose research and innovation give America its competitive edge. A large percentage of these experts are foreign citizens who must endure the painstakingly slow process of obtaining permits to study and work here.

To eliminate any confusion, we're talking about legal immigrants, who are doing everything by the book – not the millions of illegal immigrants dominating the agenda in Washington. Highly skilled foreigners should be at the front of the line for the coveted "green card" that grants them permanent residency and work rights. But only 140,000 qualify because of annual limits Congress set in 1990.

Some highly skilled immigrants have had to wait up to 10 years to get their green cards. During that wait, they cannot move or be promoted. Their families live in limbo. More and more, countries in Europe and Asia are capitalizing on their frustrations and luring them away with offers of high pay and minimal visa hassles.

America's antiquated green card policy is driving one of our most precious assets – scientific and technological expertise – into the welcoming hands of our competitors. That's insanity.

Three bills with bipartisan sponsorship are awaiting a vote this fall in Congress to expand quotas or exempt foreign-born employees with advanced science or technology degrees from the employment-based green card limit. It's important that these measures pass without being drowned in the debate over illegal immigration.

CompeteAmerica, a 130-member alliance of employers, universities and trade associations, backs this legislation. One member of the alliance, Dallas-based Texas Instruments, employs more than 12,000 people in Texas – 800 of whom are foreigners in various stages of the green card waiting process.

TI staffing director Heidi Nagel says innovations by a single one of those employees can add millions of dollars to company revenue. That creates a multiplier effect, which can ripple positively through our economy. But if that foreign employee leaves, the positive effects move with him to another country.

The way America can maintain its edge is to retain, not drive away, its brightest talent. If Congress continues stalling, we might as well replace semiconductors with jobs on the list of our major exports.

55 percent

The portion of engineering master's degrees awarded by major Texas universities that went to foreign citizens

 
75 percent

The portion of engineering Ph.D.s that went to foreign citizens from those same universities

 
30 percent

The increase in skilled foreign talent being sought by Australia next year

 
30 to 90 days

The waiting time planned by the European Union for skilled immigrants to obtain a new "blue card" work permit

 
10 years

The waiting time some skilled immigrants must wait in the United States for a green card

SOURCES: American Association of Engineering Societies, CompeteAmerica

Posted by Bob Kraft at 05:18 AM | Permalink

You could qualify for an E-2 Treaty Investor Visa. First, the investor should be from a country that has a treaty of commerce and navigation or bilateral investment treaty with the U.S. Once the investor enters the U.S, the investor will be responsible for the development and administration of the investment enterprise in which he or she has invested, or is actively in the process of investing, a large sum of capital.

To begin the process, the investor should be the majority owner in the investing company, specifically more than 50% owner. The investor has to show that the investment enterprise will have sufficient capital to guarantee jobs for U.S. citizens or residents of the U.S. Once the investment company ceases to exist, the investor will no longer be an E-2 visa holder and needs to immediately depart the U.S. Generally, E-2 visa holders are admitted for a 2 year period but are eligible for extensions.

If you need further information regarding the E-2 visa process, please call 214-999-9999.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 06:57 AM | Permalink

Usted puede calcificar para una Visa de Inversionista (E-2 visa). Primero que todo, el solicitante debe ser ciudadano de un país que mantiene un tratado de comercio con los Estados Unidos. El propósito de la visa es para que el solicitante entre a los Estados Unidos para desarrollar y administrar las operaciones de una empresa en la cual él o ella ha invertido, o está activo en el proceso de invertir, una suma de capital alta.

Para empesar, el solicitante debe ser dueño de más del 50% de la compañía que ya existe o que se va a establecer en los Estados Unidos, o ser un empleado indispensable dentro de la compañía como por ejemplo ejecutivo o administrador. Tiene que demostrar que la compañía, en la cual invertirá, obtendrá ganancias suficientes para garantizar el empleo de trabajadores ciudadanos o residentes legales de los Estados Unidos. Si el negocio deja de existir, el solicitante tiene que estar dispuesto de salir inmediatamente de los Estados Unidos. Generalmente, los solicitantes que obtengan una visa E-2, son admitidos por un periodo de 2 años, y se pueden obtener extensiones.

Si usted quiere más información sobre el proceso de la visa E-2, porfavor llame al 214-999-9999.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 05:25 AM | Permalink

An article in the New York Times reveals that the recent immigration raid in Postville, Iowa has exposed not only immigration violations, but also violations of child labor laws. This is a rather shocking example of how illegal aliens and their families are exploited in this country. Here are excerpts:

When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.

Now those young immigrants have begun to tell investigators about their jobs. Some said they worked shifts of 12 hours or more, wielding razor-edged knives and saws to slice freshly killed beef. Some worked through the night, sometimes six nights a week.

At first, labor officials said the raid had disrupted federal and state investigations already under way at Agriprocessors Inc., the nation’s largest kosher plant. The raid has drawn criticism for what some see as harsh tactics against the immigrants, with little action taken against their employers.

But in the aftermath of the arrests, labor investigators have reaped a bounty of new evidence from the testimony of illegal immigrants, teenagers and adults, who were caught in the raid. In formal declarations, immigrants have described pervasive labor violations at the plant, testimony that could result in criminal charges for Agriprocessors executives, labor law experts said.

Out of work and facing deportation proceedings, many of the immigrants say they now have nothing to lose in speaking up about the conditions in the plant. They have told investigators that they were routinely put to work without safety training and were forced to work long shifts without overtime or rest time. Under-age workers said their bosses knew how young they were.

Because of the dangers of the work, it is illegal in Iowa for a company to employ anyone under 18 on the floor of a meatpacking plant.

So far, 297 illegal immigrants from the May raid have been convicted of document fraud and other criminal charges, and most were sentenced to five months in prison, after which they will be deported. Most of the young immigrants have been released from detention but remain in deportation proceedings. Ms. Parras Konrad said she will ask immigration authorities to grant them special four-year temporary visas, known as U visas, which are offered to immigrants who assist in law enforcement investigations.



Mark Lauritsen, a vice president for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which has tried to organize the plant, said he remained skeptical. “They are the poster child for how a rogue company can exploit a broken immigration system,” Mr. Lauritsen said.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 05:09 AM | Permalink

Have you been issued an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) with a notation "Serves as I-512 Advance Parole"? Please note that EAD cards serve specifically for employment authorization purposes and not for international travel. The foreign national should not travel outside the United States without an approved I-512 Advance Parole. If you have received an EAD card in error, call U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services or visit USCIS.gov to obtain a replacement card as soon as possible.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 04:55 PM | Permalink

The Washington Post has a very good article today about the increasing effect of immigration enforcement raids on employers. I continue to believe that as more and more middle-level and upper-level managers are arrested, pressure will increase from Big Business for enactment of comprehensive immigration reform.

There are probably tens of thousands of managers who are turning blind eyes to the hiring of illegal immigrants. They can't and won't all be arrested, but as more are, the rest are going to be running scared. This may decrease the hiring of illegal immigrants, which no one can legitimately complain about, but more importantly it may accelerate long-overdue reform. Please read the entire article. Here are excerpts from the article:

A three-year-old enforcement campaign against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants is increasingly resulting in arrests and criminal convictions, using evidence gathered by phone taps, undercover agents and prisoners who agree to serve as government witnesses.

But the crackdown's relatively high costs and limited results are also fueling criticism. In an economy with more than 6 million companies and 8 million unauthorized workers, the corporate enforcement effort is still dwarfed by the high-profile raids that have sentenced thousands of illegal immigrants to prison time and deportation.

Stewart A. Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department, recently told immigration experts the disparity can be traced to ineffective policies that need to be addressed by Congress.

"Companies tell me, 'We have an immigration system that allows us to hire illegal workers, legally,' " Baker said. Asked to defend President Bush's track record, he said, "Why are employers not punished more often? Because the laws we have don't really authorize that."

In the first nine months of this fiscal year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) made 937 criminal arrests at U.S. workplaces, more than 10 times as many as the 72 it arrested five years ago. Of those arrested this year, 99 were company supervisors, compared with 93 in 2007.

But Baker's comments acknowledged criticism by labor union leaders, immigrant rights' groups and Democrats about the limits of employer enforcement. His remarks also illuminate why the White House, Congress and some states have scrambled recently to adopt new steps to compel companies to identify illegal workers, and why such efforts will probably remain ineffective.

Political opposition from big business, labor and immigrant and civil rights interests has diluted immigration law for two decades, according to analysts in both parties.

"If you want law enforcement, you have to have laws that are enforceable," said Doris M. Meissner, who headed the former Immigration and Naturalization Service under the Clinton administration. The 1986 law banning the hiring of illegal immigrants, she said, "has just been chronically flawed from the time it was passed."

Raids against Swift packinghouses in six states in December 2006 highlight the administration's strategy to seek criminal indictments and felony convictions against corporate violators. An earlier approach that relied on administrative fines and forfeitures was increasingly dismissed by executives as a cost of doing business.

Enforcement disparities were displayed vividly May 12 when ICE agents swept into an Agriprocessors Inc. kosher meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa. They arrested 389 illegal workers; 270 were convicted within days in expedited court proceedings at a cattle fairgrounds; and many were sentenced to five months in prison, mostly on criminal document-fraud charges.

By contrast, ICE agents arrested two supervisors and issued an arrest warrant for a third man on July 3. The firm remains in operation.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, a newly formed group that promotes citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, said the raid shows the misdirected policy of criminalizing illegal immigration for workers while not shutting down the jobs "magnet" that lures them. Several critics, including a federal court interpreter who participated in the Agriprocessors hearings, said the government's legal tactics are coercive and threaten defendants' due process rights.

"There's no question this administration is coddling unscrupulous employers while arresting undocumented immigrants in order to make their statistics look good," Sharry said.

But he echoed Baker's frustration at politicians who seek to look tough on immigration and yet do not provide effective law enforcement tools or address the nation's labor needs and underground population. "The dysfunctional immigration system really is the fault of Congress, for failing to lead," Sharry said.
Few expect the situation to change soon with this fall's elections looming. Some GOP congressional campaigns are talking tough, but the party is wary of further alienating its traditional business base. Democrats in turn rely on labor and immigrant support, leading the House to propose a $40 billion DHS budget bill that would require ICE to prioritize $800 million in enforcement funding next year to deporting illegal immigrants with criminal records, not workers.

At a Georgetown Law School conference in May, Baker of DHS described a sense among voters that "both parties owed their base a kind of collusion of pretend enforcement of the immigration laws." He added, "I can't say that was completely misplaced skepticism."

Posted by Bob Kraft at 08:19 AM | Permalink

Earlier this month, in Iowa, two supervisors at a kosher meatpacking plant where hundreds of illegal immigrants were rounded up in May were arrested on criminal immigration charges. I believe this is just the first of many such management arrests to come. Employers are not going to be able to continue to pretend that hundreds of unauthorized aliens got jobs at their plants without management being aware of the employees immigration status.

As managers higher up in the chain of command are arrested, I predict business owners will put increasing pressure on politicians for comprehensive immigration reform. Everyone knows the current system is broken. We just need some political courage to come up with an improved system.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 04:37 PM | Permalink

Today's New York Times has an excellent article about employers fighting tougher immigration laws. This is presenting a dilemma for certain politicians who want to appear tough on immigration but soft on big business. Most lawyers who are involved with immigration saw this impasse coming long ago --you just can't have it both ways. Politicians can't get illegal immigrants out of the country without cracking down on the employers who hire them. And now the politicians are going to have to choose between getting the votes of the tough-on-immigrants citizens or getting the donations of the we-need-employees business owners.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 09:54 PM | Permalink

An article in the Dallas Morning News points out that more and more illegal immigrants are returning to their home countries because of the worsening U.S. economy. The jobs are not as plentiful and the pay is not as good as a couple of years ago. Of course increased enforcement of workplace immigration laws has contributed to the exodus, as has a growing sense among immigrants that U.S. immigration law reform is not going to happen anytime soon. Here are excerpts from the article:

According to Mexican consulate officials in Dallas, some 400 immigrant families have told them so far this year that they're going back to Mexico and asked for transfer documents to enroll their children in Mexican schools.

Enrique Hubbard Urrea, Mexican consul general in Dallas, said it is impossible to track every Mexican who leaves the area. But he said the number asking for transfer documents at the consulate is on the rise.

In 2005, the consulate issued 162 such documents; in 2006 it was 199; and last year it was 270. At the current rate, more than twice as many people will leave this year as last, he said.

"There is no doubt the trend indicates that the number is growing," Mr. Hubbard said.

And it isn't happening only in Dallas. At the Mexican consulates in Chicago and Phoenix, too, the number of Mexican families applying for transfer documents for their children has increased.

According to informal surveys by the Mexican consulate in Dallas, most of those wanting to return to Mexico cite the sudden scarcity of jobs, fear of deportation and uncertainty about obtaining legal resident status any time soon.

 Mark López, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center, said he has no reliable data about the number of immigrants returning to Mexico but is not surprised many are going.

"Lower-income people – obviously including immigrants – have been disproportionately affected by the economic downturn," he said.

Two weeks ago, the Pew center said the unemployment rate among Hispanic immigrants reached 7.5 percent in the first quarter of 2008, compared with 5.5 percent during the same quarter of last year.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 06:39 PM | Permalink

The Dallas Morning News has an interesting op-ed piece today, written by the owner of a large Texas produce company. The gist is that many farmers are having to cut back on their production, or change the types of crops they grow, because of a shortage in farm laborers. He suggests we need immigration reform or we will have to begin importing our food from Mexico. Here are excerpts:

American farmers are living an unfolding labor crisis so much worse than a drought or a flood or a plague of locusts. But unlike those natural disasters, this one is entirely preventable, if we only had enough national leaders willing to act on common-sense solutions.

Instead, we're getting nothing but "get tough" laws and regulations that will bring dangerous consequences.

While row crops like corn and wheat have been successfully mechanized, the fact is that hand labor is still critical to bringing in the harvest of wholesome fresh fruit, vegetables, milk and meat. More than 80 percent of the hired labor force bringing in the harvest is foreign born, and likely two-thirds to three-quarters does not have proper immigration status.

Despite this, America's current dysfunctional immigration policy is one of "enforcement first, damn the consequences." This approach is driving our food productivity out of the U.S., plain and simple.

Here in Texas, we have the third-largest labor-intensive agricultural sector in the country. What is happening to it? In a recent Texas A&M study and survey, 77 percent of responding growers reported that they are actively scaling back their business because of labor concerns.

This means planting less, harvesting less and switching to subsidized row crops rather than free-market crops like fruit and vegetables. Almost 30 percent reported moving at least some of their operations out of the country. Many more are considering that option.

As production leaves the U.S., the giant sucking sound will be the shriveling of our rural economies.

Our policymakers keep bringing us more of the same dangerous policies. This month, President Bush announced new rules forcing federal contractors and subcontractors to electronically verify the eligibility of their workforce. Only a handful of farms across America could meet this test. Yet the immigration restrictionists cheered loudly.

Will they be cheering when our military and school lunch programs are forced to buy fruit, vegetables and milk from other countries to feed our troops and our children?

A solution for the farm labor crisis cannot wait until a new president and Congress decide to revisit this toughest of issues. The cost of losing control of our food supply is too great

Posted by Bob Kraft at 12:34 PM | Permalink

The Associated Press is reporting that President Bush has signed an executive order requiring contractors and others who do business with the federal government to verify that their employees are working in the United States legally

The order says federal departments and agencies must require contractors to use an electronic system to verify that the workers are eligible to work in the U.S.

AP notes that this order comes as a worker verification bill has stalled in Congress.

The impact of this executive order could be enormous. There are tens of thousands of employers who "do business" with the government, including most hospitals and universities. Plus of course every company that deals with the Department of Defense. One big question unanswered for now is when the order goes into effect.

Posted by Bob Kraft at 01:22 PM | Permalink

The Houston Chronicle ran a thought-provoking article today titled Immigration raid spurs calls for action against employers. The point of the article is that if the government was serious about workplace enforcement, they would arrest officers and management, not just workers. In the recent Iowa raid, more than ⅓ of the employees were arrested and labeled as illegal immigrants. As the article quotes a New York congressman, "Is it not reasonable to assume that if over a third of the work force employed at this plant violated labor law in one form or another that management has to have some complicity in those violations?"

So will we continue to put on a show of hassling workers while we allow management to skate free? Or will we get serious about enforcement by sending some corporate officers to prison? Or, would it be smarter to just sit down and come up with a comprehensive immigration reform package that both political parties could agree to pass? Here are excerpts from the article:

After the biggest immigration raid in U.S. history, hundreds of workers have been sentenced but not one company official as yet faces any charges — something critics say is typical of a federal government that is tough on employees but easy on owners.

Worker advocates and lawmakers say the fact that nearly 400 workers were arrested in the May 12 raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville — or more than one-third of the total number of employees — proves that company officials must have known they were hiring illegal immigrants.

"Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem with immigration," said U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, an Iowa Democrat whose district borders Postville.

Such raids are designed to get headlines and make it appear that the federal government is cracking down on illegal immigration, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigration reform group America's Voice. But he says even those who think enforcement is the answer can't seriously believe the 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. can be arrested and deported.

"Even if you wanted to pursue an imbalanced enforcement-first strategy, the only thoughtful way to do it would be to go after employers, make examples of them and try to scare other employers into compliance," he said. "They're not doing that."

Continue reading "Immigration Raid Spurs Calls For Action Against E" »

Posted by Bob Kraft at 09:19 PM | Permalink

The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial a few days ago that I'm just getting around to reading. The subject is employment-related illegal immigration, and specifically the government's E-Verify program. The Journal takes the very sensible position that the whole system is pretty much stupid.



The Journal makes the point that the only logical way to reduce legal immigration is to increase the opportunities for legal immigration. Otherwise, as long as there is a labor shortage in the United States, it will continue to be filled by workers coming to the country illegally. Here are excerpts:

Federal immigration officials raided an Iowa meatpacking plant this month in what is being called the largest operation of its kind in U.S. history. Nearly 400 of the plant's 900 employees were arrested on immigration charges. Do you feel safer?

Ever since immigration reform died in Congress last year, the Bush Administration has made a show of stepping up enforcement. But do homeland security officials really have nothing better to do than raid businesses that hire willing workers – especially in states like Iowa, where the jobless rate is 3.5%? These immigrants are obviously responding to a labor shortage for certain jobs. Giving them a legal way to enter the country would free up homeland security money and manpower to focus on real threats.

The Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act (SAVE) was introduced by Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat. The bill does nothing to increase legal immigration, which is the only realistic way to decrease illegal immigration. Instead, it throws more money at a mandatory employment verification system (E-Verify) for the nation's six million employers.

This political theater notwithstanding, the SAVE Act deserves to die on the merits. E-Verify is pitched as a check on undocumented workers. But this law would require that every worker in the country run this new verification gauntlet to change jobs.

E-Verify is currently a voluntary pilot program for new workers. About 50,000 employers use it, and studies have revealed problems galore, partly because the Social Security Administration (SSA) database on which it relies contains an error rate of around 4%. With about 55 million new hires in the U.S. annually, a 4% error rate means erroneously flagging some two million people each year. They would then have to visit their local SSA office to prove in person that they have permission to work in their native land.

Keep in mind that the SSA isn't exactly a model of speed and efficiency. By its own admission 50% of calls to branch offices and 25% to the 1-800 number aren't even answered. And what of calls that do get through? It currently takes, on average, more than 500 days to get a decision on a disability appeal. Even if E-Verify were ready for prime time, there's little chance it would reduce illegal immigration. As the CBO analysis concluded, an employment verification mandate is more likely to drive illegal aliens – most of whom now work on the books – into the underground economy, not out of the country.

It's also easy to lose perspective. Restrictionists insist that we're in the middle of an illegal alien "crisis." Yet illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. number about seven million, which is less than 5% of an overall workforce of 145 million people. Is this problem really big enough to justify a centralized federal government file on every U.S. worker?

Posted by Bob Kraft at 04:11 PM | Permalink