13
Feb

Congress Wants Americans to Trust Them on Immigration Enforcement; Why Should We?

Published on February 13th, 2014

Earlier last week, a California reporter called me to ask if I thought the House would pass amnesty legislation in 2014. During our conversation, in which I told him I don’t think Congress will act this year, the reporter got around to wondering what’s happened to internal enforcement, once a vital part of the old Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The simple answer is that workplace enforcement is virtually nonexistent. According to an August 2013 Congressional Research Service report, enforcement peaked in 2008 when .06 percent (six one-hundredths of 1 percent) of about 8.3 million illegal workers were arrested, and .01 percent (one one-hundredth of 1 percent) of their employers were fined.

Some peak! The CRS report noted that this was the highest number of arrests in more than a decade and referred to total actions taken against illegal employees and their law-breaking employers as “a very small percentage.”

Despite an arsenal of tools at their disposal, including civil or criminal penalties for employers, criminal indictments and forfeitures, neither the Departments of Homeland Security nor Labor has acted to end or at least significantly reduce illegal immigrants in the workforce.

Not only is the federal government unwilling to enforce immigration law at the job site, it has stalled on mandating nationwide E-Verify, the free and accurate online program that quickly confirms whether an employee is legally authorized to work.

E-Verify, interior enforcement, immigrationA February 2013 study titled “Early Evidence Suggests E-Verify Laws Deter Hiring of Unlawful Workers” and written by Jason Arvelo, senior quantitative analyst at Bloomberg Government, found evidence to support E-Verify’s ability to deter the hiring of aliens.

Based on his research, Arvelo concluded that after E-Verify laws passed in Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, aliens dropped from the payroll and were replaced by legal workers. Arvelo also found a direct relationship between strict penalties and higher compliance among employers.

The White House and Congress are long on promising enforcement. But judging by their blatant nonperformance, they haven’t delivered. Keeping in mind their failure to provide even minimal enforcement, to anyone who thinks the amnesty under consideration would provide it, I warn: “Buyer Beware.”

Go to the CAPS Action Alert page here to urge Congress to make unemployed Americans, not amnesty, its No. 1 priority in 2014.

You are donating to :

How much would you like to donate?
$10 $20 $30
Would you like to make regular donations? I would like to make donation(s)
How many times would you like this to recur? (including this payment) *
Name *
Last Name *
Email *
Phone
Address
Additional Note
Loading...