E-Verify

Illegal immigration isn’t just about criminals and the border — but that’s almost all we’ve been hearing about, whether at the national level or in the states, as has been the case leading up to today’s Georgia Republican-primary runoff.

Criminal deportations are essential, of course, and need to be increased. Sanctuary cities, shielding such criminals, have to be reined in. And the routine abuse of asylum, especially using children as a ticket into the U.S., has to be quashed.

But most illegal aliens are neither drunk-driving, dope-dealing rapists, nor bogus asylum seekers coached by immigration lawyers on how to game the system. They’re ordinary working stiffs, half of them arriving legally and then never leaving. They’re mainly coming to work, and that’s why weakening the magnet of jobs that attracts is essential both to the practice and the rhetoric of immigration control.

The president must have uttered/tweeted the words “E-Verify” at some point over the past three years, but no instance comes immediately to mind, certainly not a recent one. Even just a tweet or two would help keep the issue in the public discussion, providing for a more balanced immigration message and giving traction to ongoing efforts such as that of House Judiciary chairman Bob Goodlatte to get an E-Verify mandate passed.

The same holds true in today’s primary vote in Georgia. Both candidates — Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp — check a lot of the right boxes on immigration and don’t have any really obvious red flags. But, as Georgia’s steadfast immigration activist D.A. King has noted, the two candidates:

have mostly kept their immigration focus away from topics that may offend the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and narrowed to “sanctuary cities” and on illegal aliens who have already committed additional crimes in the United States — or “criminal illegal aliens.”

 

The main driver of illegal immigration is illegal employment, which was not mentioned in either campaign.

While some members of Congress and agricultural groups have been working hard to pass an agricultural labor bill before the August recess, one agricultural group is thanking its members for killing it.

Tom Nassif, president and CEO of Western Growers, an association representing growers of more than half the produce in the U.S., sent an email to hundreds of his members July 13 thanking them for lobbying against the revised Ag and Legal Workforce Act of House Judiciary Chairman Robert Goodlatte, R-Va.

“We have been informed that the U.S. House of Representatives will NOT vote on legislation next week that would impose mandatory E-Verify (electronic verification of employment eligibility) with no fix for our existing workers,” Nassif wrote.

When Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, it was hailed as a victory for border security in exchange for an amnesty that addressed illegal immigration. For the first time in our nation’s history, Congress made it a federal crime to employ undocumented workers. At that time, everyone — Democrats and Republicans — believed that Congress had finally solved the problem of illegal immigration by cutting off the “jobs” magnet.

But much of the bill was never enforced, and 32 years later, it is clear that Congress must do more to protect American workers and to combat illegal immigration.