By William Kovacs
Today’s political rants on immigration reform focus on every aspect of reform (the Wall, fencing, ports, technology, more border agents, more beds, more detention facilities, more accommodations for children, more judges, more money) except the one change that is the most cost-efficient way to address a substantial part of the problem – ensuring jobs are filled with legal workers. As the New York Times wrote in its March 20, 2017 edition “…the strongest magnet that has drawn millions of immigrants, legal or not, to the United States for generations: jobs.”
So why do our politicians focus on every aspect of illegal immigration other than ensuring that persons working in the United States have the proper documentation for being lawfully employed? Why do we allow employers to hire illegal workers? What is illegal immigration costing us?
The answer is quite simple: our immigration laws actually allow for employers to accept fake documents by not requiring them to verify the authenticity of the work papers. Except for government contractors and employers in a handful of states that have mandatory E-Verify laws, the laws of the United States only require employers to undertake a facial review of the workers' documents, i.e., if the documents look authentic on their face, then they can be accepted as genuine, notwithstanding their authenticity.
This “fake document process” is allowed because powerful industries lobby our Congress to allow for them to hire illegal workers. They are cheaper; they have few enforceable rights; they can be dismissed at the pleasure of the corporation; they can be harassed and have no means to protect themselves. Moreover, these illegal workers live in constant fear of deportation. These fears give corporations immense control over an illegal workforce. Moreover, these laws give corporations vast discretion over the composition of the U.S. workforce by allowing them the right to determine who can legally work in the U.S.
Corporations must be legally obligated to ensure that the people they hire are authorized to work in the United States. No more “winks and nods” to avoid their responsibility to hire legal workers. Such a requirement is fair not only to legal workers but also it protects illegal immigrants from corporate abuse.
How do we reform the current process that allows corporations to hire unauthorized workers? The simple answer is the make E-Verify process mandatory! E – Verify is an electronic process that allows employers to verify the identity and eligibility of new workers to work in the United States. The process matches information provided by the worker with the records from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. The focus of E – Verify is to filter out undocumented workers applying for jobs and to prohibit them from working in this country. Unfortunately, since E – Verify is voluntary, Daniel Costa, Director of the Immigration Law and Policy Center of the Economic Policy Center, estimates that only 763,500 employers out of 18 million in the United States, participate.
Studies demonstrate that the existing, but very limited, E - Verify program is very accurate. A GAO study found that the process had a 1 percent error rate. Corporations claim, however, that such an error rate is unacceptable since most of the errors involve documentation held by immigrants and that in a country of 180 million workers the process could improperly deny work to 1.8 million job seekers. Is a 99% accuracy rate good enough for government work? How many of these workers have the proper legal documentation? If a worker is denied employment but has proper papers, there is an appeals process that would allow them to present the appropriate documents to obtain legal work status.
As a nation, we need to control our borders both for the rule of law and to ensure that people in this nation are legal and able to support themselves. The FAIR report titled: The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on the United States” ( https://www.fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscalburden- illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers ), finds there are 12.5 million illegal immigrants in our country and about 4.2 million citizen children of illegal aliens, costing federal, state and local governments approximately $135 billion annually. Contrast the FAIR report with The Perryman Report, which claims that there are only 2.8 million jobs held by illegal immigrants and these workers add $245 billion annually to the nation’s GDP. What these competing studies tell us is that the United States government does not know who is in the country or the cost of illegal immigration to the taxpayer. This lack of knowledge by our government is unacceptable!
How can our government address these unknown issues? First, keep it simple, make E – Verify mandatory so that every corporation in the United States has an obligation only to hire workers who can work legally in this country. Moreover, put substantial penalties on the employers who violate E - Verify, i.e., penalties like we have in the environmental laws, $10,000 - $1,000,000 per violation, depending on the severity of the act. These fines will make the employers’ cost-benefit analysis somewhat easier to calculate.
A mandatory E-Verify process will allow employers to identify an illegal worker. It will tell us which workers are paying taxes and most important it will eliminate what the New York Times refers to as that strong magnet - jobs - that draw millions of immigrants, legal or not, to the United States. It is time to make corporations legally responsible for hiring illegal workers!
William L. Kovacs is the author of the soon to be released (April, 2019) book, Reform the Kakistocracy. Kovacs was active in national policy issues for over forty years, serving as a senior vice president for environment, technology & regulatory affairs for a major business trade association, a chief counsel on Capitol Hill, chairman of a state environmental board and a partner in several Washington, DC law firms. Bill can be contacted at wlkovacs0@gmail.com.