California Does It Again

California is one of the states suffering from a huge illegal immigrant problem. California Democrats generally refuse to admit that there is such a problem, or even such a thing as an illegal immigrant. But on those rare occasions when they do admit both, their focus is always on businesses which hire illegals rather than the illegals themselves.

They are at least partially wrong philosophically, but punishing employers who hire illegals and taking steps to prevent further illegal immigrant hiring are excellent ideas. Cut off the potential of employment and you eliminate one of the major sources of illegal immigration. The broadest and most effective way of doing this is E-Verify. Legislation is pending before Congress to establish nationwide mandates requiring employers to utilize E-Verify.

In California, fifteen cities and counties have enacted mandatory E-Verify since 2007. The governmental agencies instituted the requirement from as little as using it solely for city/county employees to revocation of business licenses for private employers who do not use E-Verify. The cities are Mission Viejo, Temecula, Murrieta, Riverside, Santa Maria, Lake Elsinore, Wildemar, Lancaster, Palmdale, San Clemente, Escondido, Menifee, Hemet, San Juan Capistrano, Hesperia, Norco, Rancho Santa Margarita, and Simi Valley. San Bernardino County is the only entity to require E-Verify on a county-wide bases.

In addition, six other cities have drafted legislation requiring E-Verify and were ready to vote. Then the boom fell. Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown and the open borders Democrats who run the state passed a statewide law prohibiting governmental agencies at any level from mandating E-Verify. After all, what's the point of being an illegal immigrant getting in-state tuition, grants and scholarships if you can't get a job after graduation because of E-Verify?

Ted Wegener, who played a major role in getting E-Verify passed for San Bernardino County, says: "It is very disappointing when you spend all the time, you go to your elected representatives and you get them to do something, and then at the higher level they squash you." Wegener's group, the Inland Empire Conservative Activists, was on its way toward getting E-Verify passed for Riverside and Orange Counties as well.

The open borders crowd reached down and pulled up its usual arguments. Sara Sadhwani of the California Immigrant Policy Center said "while a handful of cities in California and a handful of states across the country have moved to mandate the use of this kind of program, it's very misguided." In other words, an effective means of drastically reducing the incentive for errant employers to hire illegals is "misguided."

Assemblyman Paul Fong (D-Sunnyvale), introduced the bill to halt E-Verify because he believes it is an unnecessary burden on business. I'd like to know what "business" he is referring to. The burden is making sure that the company has at least one person (who could easily be an already-existing employee) who has access to a computer and a minimal knowledge of how to use the Internet. There are costs of E-Verify that are minimal compared to the private background checks any diligent private employer would use to determine the immigration and criminal status of a potential employee. But that doesn't stop Fong: "It is costly, time-consuming. It's unfair for big businesses and definitely for small businesses. Why make a flawed system mandatory?" Well, I guess we wouldn't want to be unfair, would we?

Naturally the supporters of the bill cited examples of how the E-Verify system "often" misidentifies U.S. citizens and legal immigrants. And of course they pulled out a poster girl named Jessica St. Pierre who was allegedly fired from her job because her name was not correctly entered into the E-Verify system. Anecdotal evidence aside, E-Verify claims to have an error rate of about 1%. Independent agencies make it more like 6% and dropping as data banks are constantly updated and improved. The concept that legitimate employees are being denied employment willy-nilly because of E-Verify is about as believable as Barack Obama's claim that his mother died because of a lack of medical insurance coverage.

I simply find it hard to believe that any reputable employer would fire a good employee after an E-Verify notification without first thoroughly checking the employee's own proof. If the employee is in fact a legal immigrant or American citizen, that's easily proven, and the information can be sent off to DHS and E-Verify for correction. A valued employee is unlikely to lose a job permanently because a clerk at a computer somewhere made an entry error.

Beside the alleged "financial burden on business," there are other costs to be considered and weighed against it. How about the cost of Medicaid and welfare programs for illegal immigrants? How about the loss in state tax revenues resulting from employers who hire illegals and pay them "under the table?" How about the cost of jobs lost for American citizens and legal immigrants? For that matter, how about the human cost of allowing unscrupulous employers to hire illegals and pay them less than minimum or comparable wages while putting them into working conditions that no citizen or legal immigrant would tolerate?

Brian Ambrose, who is an analyst in the Murrieta city manager's office, is perfectly happy with the voiding of his city's E-Verify ordinance. Says Ambrose: "We have not received a single phone call [reporting illegal immigrant hiring]--we did not believe there was ever a problem with illegal immigration here in Murrieta." Who is this mysterious "we?" The city manager system frequently ends up with the city manager's office being at odds with both the citizens of the city involved, and often misguiding the city councils which pass the ordinances. Concurrence is not causation. A lack of phone calls could mean a great many things, including the likelihood that illegal immigrants facing E-Verify knew the jig was up and it was time to get out of Dodge before they got caught.

So now, it's up to Congress. The left won't like it, but if the bill requiring E-Verify nationwide is passed, they can't complain that the states are interfering with the fed's sole power over immigration matters. Not unexpectedly, the E-Verify bill in the House of Representatives is being advanced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas). But I take pride in pointing out that the former mayor of Simi Valley and now longtime Republican Representative Elton Gallegly of California is the co-sponsor.