This is a couple of days old, but it's still worth a brief mention. When the House Freedom Caucus put out its demands for a budget bill, one of them was passage of border legislation:
The stopgap bill includes a House-passed border security proposal that orders construction of the border wall to resume, boosts the ranks of Border Patrol agents and tightens asylum rules. The plan included in the continuing resolution, though, leaves out a provision of the immigration bill related to E-Verify, which allows employers to confirm the eligibility of employees to work in the U.S.
Of course it does. Republican border plans routinely include lots of crowd-pleasing provisions that have little prospect of working (walls, more agents, etc.) while leaving out the one thing that probably would: E-Verify. Granted, E-Verify isn't the answer to our newfangled problem of asylum seekers, but it's sure the answer to our old-fashioned problem of illegal immigrants: if you can't prove you're legally allowed to work, you can't get hired. If you get hired anyway, the company that did it is liable to big fines. That would work.
And that's precisely the problem. The money wing of the party, which tolerates social conservatives only as long as they don't interfere with business, opposes any border proposal that requires action on their part and might actually be effective. They want to be left alone to hire all the cheap immigrant labor they want.
Business Republicans know that walls are just hot air, so they don't object to Donald Trump and his acolytes using them to feed the base some red meat. But E-Verify? That would actually constrain their ability to hire undocumented workers—and that's why Republicans generally stay quiet about it.
Hey Kevin this is interesting and sad -- https://undark.org/2023/07/19/the-vice-of-spice-confronting-lead-tainted-turmeric/?ueid=4e2831f119ecb31833a43fc27cf0f522&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Copy%20of%20Future%20Perfect%20%28Wednesday%29%209/20/23&utm_term=Future%20Perfect
Very interesting, especially since some people have tried, or are trying, turmeric, and/or its active ingredient, curcumin, for treating multiple myeloma.
I believe the repulsives like the non documented under the radar as they are cheaper to hire and fire and are so under paid.
Bingo.
Having lots of brown people sneaking over the border is a twofer for R's: it gives them a cheap exploitable workforce; and it gives them a cudgel to beat D's with ("they won't secure the border!")
It is not really "not serious", it is just dishonest as usual.
Exactly
E-Verify is such an obvious solution. But any time I get to thinking hard about it or something like it ("Make it a crime to knowingly hire an undocumented worker. And offer a green card to any undocumented worker who helps make such a case") I get uneasy because...yeah, it'd work, but I don't actually want this. Not unless it's bundled with a very broad amnesty for people already in country.
I’m not sure how much of a solution e-verify is. As I understand it with farm labor the big growers use labor contractors to hire their crews. The contract requires the laborers to be here legally. So when there is a raid the growers point at the labor contractor. But the labor contractors are shady and disappear. I don’t know how e-verify fixes that.
It (e-verify) may not be sufficient, but it does seem necessary/appropriate.
That's correct. It's really hard to crack down on "employers" of illegal immigrants when those entities are usually really shady, fly-by-night operations that can disappear and spring up again somewhere else before anyone catches up with them.
That problem exists in agriculture but not in the meat packing industry, which is the OTHER major employer of undocumented immigrants. Meat packing requires large industrial facilities which by their nature cannot be "fly-by-night operations". E-Verify would force them all to hire legal residents, which would mean minimum wage and potential accountability for workplace abuses. It's their nightmare scenario, and you may rest assured they have already called their congresscritters to talk about it, which is why R's will never do it.
Presumably, the same mechanisms that banks and credit card companies use to make sure the person using their services is the person they say they are could also be used to verify and track the users of E-Verify too. Make the employer-side users of E-Verify upload their drivers’ licenses and social security numbers, like we do when people take out mortgages. And then hold those people criminally liable for all the E-Verifying they do. (It’s not that hard to track most people down with their SSN and DL.)
Sounds like prisoner's dilemma.
E-Verify is such an obvious solution.
It's part of the solution, yes. But you're still going to need a lot more dollars for enforcement, because plenty of Americans are willing to hire undocumented workers under the table. And E-Verify would work most optimally if it were combined with enhanced legal immigration or work permit channels. If you both enhance the ability of people to come to the US to earn money and simultaneously reduce the attractiveness of doing so in contravention of the country's laws, the results are likely to be powerful.
E-verify is actually pretty useless. All it does is check that a name attached to a SSN looks correct. It doesn't actually verify that the person claiming that name or SSN are who they say they are (via fingerprints or something like that). It's easy as hell to just borrow (steal, whatever) a name and SSN number and submit it to your employer and if they don't actually ask for multiple IDs or something like that, you won't get flagged.
Since having an SSN does NOT entitle you to work in the USA, this would be a spectacularly useless way for E-Verify to operate.
Not saying that this is not possible, just seems unlikely to me.
And yes, lying about who you are is certainly possible, but much more difficult if E-Verify is doing nothing than more you describe ("hmm, the same SSN is apparently trying to work in 7 different locations")
You're right. My description of the process was a little unclear. E-verify checks an id like a green card or SS card to confirm that the person named on that card is legal to work -- it's not just confirming the existence of a SSN. The problem, as I wrote, is that it's pretty easy to game the system by just submitting the name and id/ssn of someone you know is legal and unless the processor asks for further proof of your id, it clears you.
More here: https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2019/10/29/e-verify-immigration-060347#:~:text=The%20first%20is%20by%20taking,else's%20identification%20to%20his%20employer.
In other words, there needs to be a biometric component.
Seriously, it’s not as if other countries have zero experience doing exactly what E-Verify is supposed to do in the US. And those countries have a lot fewer undocumented workers as a result. Just study what those countries do and imitate them.
Ugh all these procedural arguments against E-Verify are the same as the ones proffered for why gun registries can’t work either. Despite the fact that dozens of countries have working gun registries.
Ugh all these procedural arguments against E-Verify are the same as the ones proffered for why gun registries can’t work either.
The arguments aren't merely procedural. One other argument is that the United States has a land border that: A) is shared with a poorer region with much lower wages; B) and is very long and remote.
If you changed either A (we'd be like Canada) or B (we'd be like South Korea or Israel) there'd be a significantly reduced problem. But we're not like those countries, and so we tend to attract big inflows of folks who are attracted by our higher wages, and who can hike across the border.
E-Verify should be required. I agree! But it's unlikely to be as effective as it might be in Canada or Denmark (again, under the table employment is a thing).
You want to see Republicans freak out? Propose a national ID card as a solution.
Yep -- a biometric id card linked to a unique SSN is really the only way to go.
Thirty years ago I was told by a born again Christian woman I worked with that the government would require national ID in the form of a chip implanted in our foreheads with all of our information on it. All of the IDs would begin with the number 666. I do believe a good portion of the Republican base still believes this.
They'd line up to buy that chip if it came in Trump-branded packaging.
They already wear red MAGA hats and other stupid swag to let you know they worship The Beast, so why not?
Let's start a rumor that all those MAGA hats have GPS chips imbedded in them so the deep state can track them.
If we prevented unauthorized residents from working in the US, most would probably go home. And then the economy would be severely messed up as we suffer a massive labor shortage in lower paid occupations.
If you want to do it properly, enforce E-Verify AND give them green cards. or more palatably, start a guest worker program.
When my wife and I lived in MA, there were very well established guest worker programs pretty much all through New England. The apple industry was utterly dependent on a lot of workers showing up at the right time. First, to prep trees in the spring and do a lot of cleanup, then continued work to protect the trees from bad weather, and then ramping up as the harvest approached. A lot of Jamaicans and other Caribbean islanders came in to help with the harvest, a number stayed on afterwards to clean up and prepare the trees for winter. MA was pretty strict with requirements for compensation, accommodation, breaks, meals, etc. Seemed to work fairly well - but Republicans hadn't gone completely insane in the 70s - they just started to go crazed about that time - and kept digging.
An improved version of e verify (accurate national database, bio metric ID and with large fines for violations) could, possibly, have a material impact on undocumented people working in the US. I do not believe either party supports a broadening of the use of e verify. Further, I have seen no serious mention of something like an improved version of e verify from either party.
Basically, it seems to me, both parties want this immigration flow to continue...
Well, yes. And it WILL continue. Unless long term US citizens start getting seriously (um) libidinous and bump their birth rate up a good bit. Not gonna happen. So the choice will eventually come down to doing something properly planned to handle:
1. The shortage of manual labor
2. The demands caused by "the great aging" requiring more manual labor
and
3. The need for lots of scientific and technical people beef up that sector.
So, do we accept reality, and design sensible immigration policies that, in addition to getting us more general labor AND more intellectual labor, that also protect them from exploitation? Or do we allow Republicans to cosplay at responsibility?
The answer to the shortage of manual labor is to adjust to it. For instance, there are a steadily increasing number of crops that can be harvested mechanically rather than by hand. Also, employers SHOULD have to compete for workers. Rather than a race to the bottom, we could be seeing a race to the top; which employer can offer the best pay, benefits, working conditions package and successfully attract workers. This will probably result in fewer fast food restaurants and more expensive food at the ones that remain, but there's a cost to everything and if the overall result is that low skill workers end up better off, it's worth it.
Immigration should NEVER be used to alleviate labor shortages; this is one case where I will adopt the Republican mantra; let the market deal with it.
I tend to agree with you on this one. The same for the abuse of the H1B worker system.
I'll add that the other problem with E-Verify or other employer-based verification system is that a substantial portion of the undocumented workforce doesn't work for a corporate (or other formal) employer where they're "on the books," so to speak -- they live in the cash-based shadow economy doing things like landscaping, handyman stuff, housekeeping, or childcare. How are you going to enforce employment rules for private households? I suppose you could create something like the Texas abortion law where you allow private parties to sue anyone they suspect of hiring an illegal domestic, but since that would put mostly upper-class people in a pickle, that's defiinitely not going anywhere.
So just because something doesn’t work 100% of the time in 100% of all possible circumstances, that’s a reason to not use it for the “substantial” number of times it will work exactly as intended?
Interesting. I guess registering guns, licensing drivers, issuing liquor permits, inspecting restaurants, checking IDs for cigarette purchases, requiring pets to be tagged, requiring school children to be vaxxed, etc are all worthless too. Because they don’t stop 100% of people from getting guns, driving cars, selling booze, operating commercial kitchens, buying cigs, owning pets or sending their unvaxxed kids to school illegally. [throws hands up as nothing can ever be done about anything ever again unless it works 100% of the time]