The Pink Flamingo :: The Unintended Consequences of Immigration Reform & Suicide for the GOP

I have a few immigration links I’ve been trying to put together. Tomorrow it may be that I have a fascinating story for you. I’m not sure yet.

John Tanton has succeeded in getting one of his flunkies, Brian Bilbray, is now in charge of the House Immigration Reform Caucus. Bilbray is a ex-lobbyist who worked for FAIR, which is now recognized as a Hate Group. How do people like Bilbray mange to get elected to Congress? The Numbers USA list of signers. You might want to read the Pollyanna spin Numbers USA puts on it. The Politico has additional information. After reading the Politico, I am beginning to wonder if this isn’t smoke and mirrors to make John McCain look good. I hope this is all it is.

The Save Act

“…The “SAVE Act” would:
• Require mandatory use and rapid expansion of the Basic Pilot/E-Verify Electronic Employment Verification system for all employers. The “SAVE Act” would require that within 4 years, all employers in the U.S. – approximately 6 million – use Basic Pilot/E-Verify to verify the work authorization of ALL workers – immigrant and U.S. citizen, new hires and the current workforce. Slightly more than 50,000 employers currently voluntarily use Basic Pilot for new hires – less than one percent of all employers; only 4 percent of all new hires are currently verified through Basic Pilot.

A recent independent evaluation of Basic Pilot/E-Verify concluded that employers currently using the system often misuse it, and that the system requires significant improvements before further expansion. The Basic Pilot/E-Verify system relies heavily on the Social Security Administration (SSA) database that, according to government sponsored studies, contains unacceptably high error rates. SSA estimates that 17.8 million of its records contain errors related to name, date of birth, or citizenship status, and 12.7 million of those records relate to U.S. citizens. DHS databases contain similarly high error rates. If the databases are not dramatically improved, the errors in the SSA database alone could result in 2.5 million workers a year being misidentified as unauthorized for employment or as no-matches. Workers, including U.S. citizens, will get caught in this faulty system and will lose their jobs.

The “SAVE Act” contains no assurances that government databases will be accurate and updated, no privacy protections for the vast amounts of personal information to be handled by employers, and no recourse for workers who are wrongfully denied employment. Most importantly, the “SAVE Act” will not prevent unscrupulous employers from avoiding the system by hiring undocumented workers under the table, thereby growing the informal economy.

• Greatly expand the SSA “no-match letter” program. – a program that was halted by a federal judge in 2007. A no-match occurs when the information in the SSA database does not match the information submitted by an employer on the W-2 form. There are many reasons that workers receive a no-match letter that have nothing to do with immigration, including name changes and employer error in entering data. The “SAVE Act” taps the SSA to play an unprecedented role of reporting and cooperating with the DHS by requiring the SSA to notify employers of ALL no-matches and to notify DHS of all unresolved no-matches. Workers who wrongfully receive a no-match letter will have 10 days to resolve the problem, or be fired. A judge recently found that the DHS no-match rule, which gave employers and workers 90 days to fix errors, placed a large burden on employers, and may result in tremendous harm – including loss of employment – for U.S. workers.

• Link the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security to enforce immigration laws. The “SAVE Act” requires SSA to notify all employees in cases where their social security number (SSN) has been reported by two or more employers and requires those workers to prove they are using a valid SSN and are employed by multiple employers simultaneously. This would be tremendously burdensome for the many workers who hold multiple jobs, and would place additional burdens on the already overstretched and underfunded SSA, resulting in delays providing Social Security benefits to the retired and disabled.

The “SAVE Act” also requires SSA to report all unresolved no-matches and multiple use SSNs to the Department of Homeland Security, increasing the amount of personal taxpayer information about workers (including U.S. citizens) that is shared between government agencies, overriding current laws protecting the privacy of taxpayer information.”

This is an absolute disaster that proves beyond a doubt that the hard core anti immigration reformers have absolutely NOTHING to do with being conservative. The only to save conservatives from themselves is to STOP THE SAVE ACT.

DESTROYING ARIZONA’S ECONOMY
From the small newspaper in Sierra Vista comes a fascinating story about additional consequences of immigration reform.

‘…The loss of the immigrant workforce, both legal and illegal, will leave Arizona hurting, according to studies done by the University of Arizona and the Pew Foundation. Estimates found that immigrants make up about 14 percent of the state’s workforce, according to the UA study. The Pew study, based on 2006 statistics, says 11 percent of the state’s workforce is illegal. A UA study done last year found that according to 2004 data, immigrants generate about $2.4 billion in tax revenues, $860 million from naturalized citizens and $1.5 billion from non-citizens. The tax costs for things such as health care, education and law enforcement adds up to $1.4 billion leaving a positive fiscal impact of about $1 billion annually. At the State Capitol, lawmakers have introduced a bill to seek Congressional approval to create a state-run temporary program. Gov. Janet Napolitano is looking to the U.S. Department of Labor to rewrite regulations to streamline visas for workers in agriculture, which is particularly hard-hit by the lack of Hispanic workers….’

SUICIDAL REPUBLICANS
A hat tip goes to Sally Vee for pointing this one out to me. From the NYTimes comes a great way for Republicans to lose elections – Just keep being hard line on immigration! Unfortunately suicidal Republicans in the Senate just don’t seem to “Get it” and have just introduced the most hard line anti-immigration proposals yet. Haven’t they read the numbers? We need to retake the Senate. It isn’t going to happen with this blank (word deleted due to Lent). I stole it from Harold Hutchinson at Called As Seen.
THE BILL

“…The package, an enforcement smorgasbord assembled by at least eight lawmakers, consists of 11 bills, but could expand to include as many as 14. Some elements echo House bills, but others go beyond House proposals. One would discourage states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal immigrants by docking 10 percent of highway funding from states that continue to do so. Another would extend the presence of National Guard on the border and a third would end language assistance at federal agencies and the voting booth for people with limited English ability. A bill by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., who is leading the effort, would impose a maximum two-year jail sentence on someone caught crossing the border for a second time. "The point is to reinforce the idea that most of us here feel that we need to make enforcement and border security a first step to solving the overall problem," said Sen. David Vitter, R-La., one of the sponsors. Although Congress usually avoids tough legislation during an election year, Vitter insisted that he and his colleagues could still get something done. "There are concrete steps we can take. None of us see any reason to waste this time," he said.

Other bills in the package would:
• Block federal funding from cities that bar their police from asking about immigration status.
• Give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to use information from the Social Security Administration to target illegal immigrants.
• Require construction of 700 miles of fencing along the Southern border, not including vehicle barriers.
• Impose sanctions on countries that refuse to repatriate their citizens.
• Deport any immigrant, legal or illegal, for one drunken-driving conviction.
• Enable local and state police to enforce federal immigration laws…Conservatives consider Republican front-runner McCain soft on immigration. McCain, along with the Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, has backed giving illegal immigrants some form of legal status, which conservatives consider "amnesty."

If McCain endorsed the Senate package, that could "create a platform for McCain to look tough on immigration, create distance from Ted Kennedy and erect a shield around the amnesty charge," Kelley said. Besides Sessions and Vitter, the bills are being introduced by GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and Arlen Specter of Penn…”