Pushing Back on Immigration

[groovedaddy]

There is nothing good about the country’s ever more merciless campaign of immigration enforcement. But at least there are emerging signs of resistance, from one of the most important, yet curiously disengaged, players in the debate: employers.

States and cities complain about the broken immigration system, but they can’t create the intricate web of policies needed to fix it — that’s up to Congress. All they can do is try to crack down locally on illegal immigrants and the businesses that hire them. The result has been haphazard enforcement without reform, which only makes the problem worse.

States have passed overly punitive laws to revoke the licenses of businesses caught hiring the undocumented and to force employers to participate in E-Verify, the deeply flawed federal system for checking workers’ documents. More than 175 bills relating to immigrant employment have been introduced by states this year.

As Julia Preston reported in The Times, business has begun pushing back. In Arizona, home to some of the most rabidly anti-immigrant politicians and advocates, a business group had huge success gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would soften some of the most stringent employer punishments enacted last year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/opinion/21mon2.html?th&emc=th

[dflprincess]

1. So, employers are asking they be allowed to continue to break the law?

My big problem with immigration laws is that employers aren't the ones being rounded up and sent to jail.

[Hydra]

2. Of course not!

Laws are for the little people.

Besides, any "enforcement" going on is purely for show. 500 here, 1000 there.

I see almost no support for sticking to legal immigration from either side of the isle, and as George Carlin said:

"Bipartisan usually means that a larger-than-usual deception is being carried out."

[Igel]

3. You understand the problem, right?

Employers have to check the identification of possible employees, and can't discriminate. So when George and Manuel both present ID, I can't check George's, even though I suspect he's an illegal immigrant from Canada, without having a good reason. And a lot of different IDs can be presented--it's hard to know what they all look like, and what possible forgeries of them all look like. I know my SS card was cheaply printed and looks like my name/info was typed in, no security measures at all. It's from '67. Now, if I hire George, it's up to the government to show that I knew his ID was fake, and that beyond a reasonable doubt. After all, as the employer I also get due process and the legal presumption of innocence.

And *that* is why employers are typically not rounded up and sent to jail. The feds can show what they need to deport an illegal immigrant. Or prove that the ID is false, stolen or forged. Note that whenever you see numbers reported for illegal immigrants charged with using a false identity, you're seeing the employer's alibi in print, with the government providing them with documentation of their alibi. But it's more than an alibi--it might actually be the truth in some cases. I accepted the ID from "Maria Gonzalez", only to have "Maria" (her real name) morph into "Gladys" something-or-other WASPish a few months later, and then become "Pamela" something-or-other a few months after that. At that point, I had no legal excuse for not turning her in.

Now, we could simplify things by making a one-step ID-check agency. That would render the employers fully culpable--they'd get an answer, and they'd have no excuse. Congress--a dem congress, with the bill signed by a repub prez--obligated themselves to do this a while back. But since Congress is only responsible to Congress, and the prez can't allocate money by himself (I have no idea if he even did, but the buck stops with Congress on this point), so the database never sprung into existence.

We could use the SSA database. After all, an employee's records will have to be reconciled when a person goes to collect--right name, SSN, employer, etc., etc. Makes sense to clean that up now, right? Nah, it might be burdensome and onerous on somebody or other--some argue on employers, some on employees. So we have to wait for the official database, even though everybody knows it will have at least the same number of errors, with the same consequences when it comes time to fix them. But at least the "protect the illiterate" folk can backstop the "make it easy to check ID folk" when an easy method of checking ID actually comes along and keep the "we don't want the government tracking us" folk at bay. And for all that, it's best if you can find a judge whose pro bono work as a practicing lawyer was defending immigrants, esp. illegal ones. One consequence is that employers continue to have plausible deniability, and it's hard to show they knew for certain that Stanley's first language, Kaqchikel, wasn't acquired in Kansas, where he also acquired a smattering of Spanish as his (only) second language.

Every database and method will have some problem, and take some time. So some employers hate the idea--they're convinced it would take too much time because, well, it's something new (it doesn't, really--the I-9 forms had the same objections raised about them, and they're trivial). Others like hiring illegal immigrants. Others are concerned that it'll create a labor shortage (with Congress doing nothing to help out, should that happen).