A good Federal jobs program that costs taxpayers nothing

January 24, 2010 6:50 PM

By Dave Schultheis

If we could wave a magic wand and add 100,000 new jobs to Colorado’s economy over the next three years, who wouldn’t go for it? We do not have a magic wand, but we have the next best thing: a program to reserve new jobs only for citizens and legal immigrants.

The internet-based federal E-Verify program allows employers to screen all new hires against a database that matches names to Social Security numbers and immigration records. More than 175,000 employers are now enrolled in the Department of Homeland Security program, and nationally, one in four new hires are processed by E-Verify.

Why doesn’t Colorado utilize this program? Actually, it does, but only timidly. Since 2006, any company doing business with a state government agency must participate in the federal E-Verify program.

So, why doesn’t Colorado require all employers to use it? Strangely, that proposal has been opposed mainly because… well, because it works. E-verify is effective in denying jobs to illegal aliens. Therefore business owners, who think they need illegal workers, oppose any measure to reserve jobs for legal workers.

Many employers end up avoiding the program because it works too well. Those opponents are joined by advocates for “migrant rights” who think a right to an illegal job should be guaranteed to anyone who succeeds in crossing our borders illegally. The people not represented in that odd coalition are the unfortunate American workers losing jobs to illegal workers.

Opponents blocked a proposal in the 2006 special session of the state legislature, and every year since, that would have mandated use of E-Verify across Colorado. In its place the legislature passed a toothless measure merely requiring employers to keep records that are then supposedly subject to audit. Three years later, not one employer has been fined and not one illegal worker has been dismissed under this meaningless law.

It is hard to make a serious argument that employers cannot find legal workers in an economy suffering from historically high unemployment. Farm laborers, you say?

The federal government already has a program for guest workers in agriculture, ski resorts, landscaping and similar seasonal businesses. Moreover, less than 5 percent of illegal aliens are employed in agriculture according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

It’s time to move forward to assure Colorado jobs for Colorado citizens and legal immigrants. E-Verify is not “anti-immigrant,” because real immigrants have green cards and can work legally.

Arguments against the program by the employer community rely mainly on myths and scare tactics. Here are a few facts opponents try to hide:

Based on a Government Accounting Office audit, the internet-based E-Verify program has an enviable error rate of only .004. More than 96 percent of new hire applicants are processed and approved within 24 hours.

Only 2.8 percent of applicants are rejected due to a mismatch between name and Social Security number, and 90 percent of those persons do not protest the rejection. More than 175,000 employers now participate nationally and an average 1,200 employers joined the program each week in 2009.

The cost to employers to set up the program is less than $100.

Employer participation in the program has grown 274 percent since 2007.

In September 2009, all federal agencies began requiring contractors to use the program.

Another argument sometimes used by opponents is that expansion of the E-verify program should await congressional action on immigration reform. In truth, the exact opposite is the case. Only when the public is convinced the nation is enforcing existing laws against illegal workers will it make any sense to consider a more ambitious reform.

In fact, that is the position of the Obama administration. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano declared in a November speech at the ultra-liberal Center for American Progress that “E-verify is an essential element of any comprehensive reform agenda.”

The federal E-Verify program is neither radical nor punitive.

Any employer participating in the program can use that participation as an affirmative defense against federal immigration enforcement if the company is ever audited by immigration authorities.

Adopting the E-Verify program will establish a level playing field for employers wanting to obey the law but are in competition against other employers using illegal labor to cut costs. This unfair competition will be reduced drastically if all employers would be required to hire only legal workers.

I plan to introduce legislation once more to adopt the E-Verify program in Colorado. If legislation fails, a ballot initiative will allow Colorado voters to make that decision on November 2.

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State Sen. Schultheis is a Republican from Colorado Springs

In-State Tuition Bill for Illegal Immigrants Skirts Intent of Law

State Senator Chris Romer has proposed a bill, SB09-170, that would grant post-secondary in-state tuition to illegal immigrants. Sen. Romer reasons that it is unfair to punish children for the decisions of adults (their parents) who chose to enter America in direct violation of our immigration laws. The Romer bill is deeply flawed on multiple levels.

For starters, neither is it the fault of the children of tax-paying American citizens that native Mexican adults along with their children have crossed our sovereign borders and taken up illegal residence in the United States. American children are already being negatively impacted (‘punished,’ if you will) by the drain of dollars away from their K-12 education and into the massive accommodations being made for the children of illegals. It now appears that Sen. Romer also wishes to grant to illegal immigrants in-state college tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state American students.

Public schools from kindergarten through high school are already required by federal law to educate all children, regardless of their immigration status. Higher education, on the other hand, while coveted by some, is not a prerequisite for making a success of oneself in America, although the Higher Education elites such an education as "fact." In fact, many citizens hold only high school degrees or GED’s are business owners or are gainfully employed in essential occupations. Additionally, with colleges and universities placing limits on their enrollments, citizens, who do wish to pursue advanced degrees, will under this bill, have to compete with non-citizens for fewer available slots.

Ten other states have passed similar legislation, and currently find themselves embroiled in lawsuits filed against their respective state governments by citizens, who have every reasonable right to expect that government will work on their behalf. Citizens also have a reasonable right to expect that government will work against any requirement to provide what is tantamount to taxpayer-financed college educations for the grown children of people who illegally crossed U. S. borders.

Handing out in-state tuition to illegal immigrants is a slap in the faces of both legal immigrants and American citizens! For example, in California the average household must contribute at least $1,200 each year to subsidize the deficit between what illegal immigrants cost in services and what they pay in taxes.

Even if a good argument could be made for such poor policy, these ten states are announcing far and wide that illegal immigration is now an American institution replete with numerous benefits! These states have brazenly cast aside the constraints imposed by Congress and the U.S. Constitution, and inevitably, American citizens are challenging state governments over this inequitable law. The result will continue to be extensive and expensive litigation, and of course, taxpayers always foot the bill for court costs.

Should Sen. Romer’s bill pass through the Legislature, Coloradans will also contest bad policy. Additionally, out-of-state U.S. citizens and legal immigrants will rightfully request the same low in-state tuition benefits that are proposed for illegals. Financial resources that are much-needed for state infrastructure will be frittered away inside Colorado court rooms.

Let’s look at some realities:

• Over the past three decades every “compassionate” gesture, designed to help immigrants assimilate—bilingual education, ever-expanding and new state welfare programs, the affirmation of a hyphenated identity, and the radical historical revisionism of southwestern American history—has actually proven to be harmful to the processes of assimilation and economic improvement for large portions of the Mexican-American community.
• After 20 years in the country, even legal Mexican immigrants have double the welfare rates of American citizens. The high school dropout rates of Mexican-Americans (both second and third generation) are two and a half times that of other natives. By age 17 Mexican immigrants are 50 percent more likely to identify themselves as Mexicans, as opposed to Mexican-Americans. By the same token, many Mexicans, who are living in “apartheid” communities across the nation romanticize Mexico—a country which gave them nothing and prompted them to flee—and deprecate the United States, which provided them with sanctuary.
• In Colorado approximately 57 percent of U.S. resident students of Hispanic heritage do not graduate from high school, despite the fact that every child in America, regardless of immigrant status, is guaranteed by law a K-12 education at taxpayer expense. Adding benefit upon benefit appears to have done little, if anything, to assist U.S. residents of Hispanic heritage to assimilate and advance their own cause.
• Neither is it a foregone conclusion that providing in-state tuition benefits to illegal immigrants would result in a revenue advantage for the American economy. Expatriates enrich Mexico’s coffers with the U. S. dollars they earn in America. One study estimated that an approximate $13.3 billion goes south across the U. S.-Mexican border every year. It stands to reason then that much of taxpayers’ investment in higher education for illegals might very well flow into Mexican banks if graduates are able to obtain gainful employment.
• Reputable employers will not violate the law by hiring an illegal alien either with or without a college degree. Of course there are those employers who will place profits above patriotism.

Apologists for such bills contend that illegal immigrants "do the work Americans won’t do." On the other hand, these same supporters of in-state tuition benefits declare it unfair that illegal immigrants are forced to work as unskilled laborers because they lack education. Which is it going to be?

Not only are the premises of this proposed bill contradictory to one another, but the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Section 505, provides that: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any post secondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

Sen. Romer has craftily worded SB090-170 in such a way that one, if pressed, could argue that his bill can also be applied to citizens in high schools across the U.S. In truth, however, the wording of the bill, requiring a student to attend a Colorado high-school for at least three years, is cleverly designed to make available taxpayer-funded college educations primarily to students, who are illegally residing in Colorado. Romer’s bill is a deliberate evasion of the intent of current law. Legislators, who purposely attempt to sidestep the law, are doing a real disservice to the constituents whom they serve. I would strongly suggest that legislators, who are willing to play fast and loose with the principle of an existing law, reassess their motivations for remaining in office.

Ultimately, giving to illegal immigrants a benefit to which even all American citizens are not entitled, signifies a breach of trust by government--a government that is, first and foremost, duty-bound to extend compassion towards American children and to protect and defend all of her citizens. Weighing down the parents of American children with ever-increasing tax burdens, in order to provide benefits for illegal immigrants, sends a loud and clear message to citizens. Lamentably, that message is neither one of fair play nor compassion.