More on E-Verify
The Supreme Court upheld Arizona's 2007 law requiring businesses to use E-Verify. I've written about this numerous times in the past, and as yet my conclusion hasn't changed. E-Verify can potentially be an effective tool for enforcement, but is still extremely expensive and loaded with onerous bugs.
A December 2010 GAO report notes that:
--the program has improved its accuracy, but still screws up with a lot of people and then has a very cumbersome and lengthy (average of 104 days) of rectifying that (in 2010 the DHS' own consultants were extremely critical)
--there is no good estimate of its cost on local governments (in 2009 officials in Georgia acknowledged that it was so expensive they were not really enforcing anything)
E-Verify supporters ignore these issues. For example, in an op-ed about the ruling Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Ken Calvert (R-CA) write the following:
E-Verify provides American employers who want to do the right thing with a straightforward tool to do so. Just like the red push-button marked “easy,” E-Verify easily confirms legal workers with just a click of a mouse.
Now, that was easy.
I suppose many people will believe that, despite facts. We will end up more mired in the current situation, with haphazard enforcement and growing frustration on all sides.
2 comments:
The ironies abound. Here California's Democrats are trying to opt out of a mandatory federal immigration program that requires state and local participation. Not surprisingly, the Republicans claim it would undermine federal enforcement of the immigration laws.
http://www.latimes.com/
news/local/la-me
-immigration-201
10531,0,7830952.story
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor : 'Permitting States to make use of E-Verify mandatory improperly puts States in the position of making decisions for the Federal Government that directly affect expenditure and depletion of federal resources'
SEIU : Service Employees International Union : "Business Death Penalty" Wrongly Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court"
It is my impression that SEIU and Sonia Sotomayor think that "Human Nature" as it is will create more cheating and shrewd methods to evade and elude the law.
You can have one million intelligent reasons to think that the Supreme Court Decision is right, or that it is very constitutional and juridically intelligent. And you may be right ..... But does this Arizona Law make sense from an economic point of view ??
SEIU : Service Employees International Union
"Business Death Penalty" Wrongly Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court"
By Gebe Martinez
May 26, 2011
"Business Death Penalty" Wrongly Upheld by U.S. Supreme Court
http://www.seiu.org/2011/05/seius-medina-business-death-penalty-wrongly-upheld.php
Some excerpts :
As Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent: 'Permitting States to make use of E-Verify mandatory improperly puts States in the position of making decisions for the Federal Government that directly affect expenditure and depletion of federal resources.'"
"Such policies ruin the economy and create a disadvantage for honest employers who are trying to follow the law, while tax-cheating employers drive the underground cash economy with disqualified workers.
"The clear message that should come from this ruling is this: Immigration continues is the sole responsibility of the Federal government, much in the same way that printing money is a uniquely federal responsibility. Immigration enforcement should not be up to the states where short-sighted efforts are more focused on attacking hard working people than on helping our economy.
"Congress must act quickly on comprehensive immigration solutions so that our economy can thrive with workers who become legalized and allow all employers in all states to play by the same set of rules."
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