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On Wednesday, a U.S. House subcommittee will discuss a bill filed by chair Lamar Smith, R-Texas, that would require the use of E-Verify, the federal program that verifies if a worker is authorized to work in the U.S.

The House Subcommittee on Immigration and Policy Enforcement will address Smith’s “Legal Workforce Act,” which would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to make the use of E-verify mandatory and permanent.

In an op-ed published today by The Los Angeles Times, Smith writes:

While 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, 7 million individuals work illegally in the United States. On top of all the challenges Americans face today, it is inexcusable that Americans and legal workers have to compete with illegal immigrants for scarce jobs.

Fortunately, there is a tool available to preserve jobs for legal workers: E-Verify. But the program is voluntary. Congress has the opportunity to expand E-Verify — including making it mandatory — so more job opportunities are made available to unemployed Americans.

Participants in a recent conference call hosted by the National Immigration Forum said mandatory E-Verify without immigration reform would harm the U.S. economy.

Tyler Moran, policy director for the National Immigration Law Center, said that if mandatory E-verify is implemented without broader immigration reform it will force some workers into the cash economy outside of our tax system, ship agricultural jobs overseas and force between 3 and 4 million American workers to stand in a government line to correct their records or lose their jobs, and that 770, 000 people will likely lose their jobs because of government database errors in E-Verify.

Craig J. Regelbrugge, vice president for government relations and research at the American Nursery & Landscape Association said that mandatory E-Verify without broader solutions would have the largest impact on the agriculture and seasonal employment sectors of the economy, resulting in economic dislocation, production declines, fewer jobs and more imports.

Moran added that Arizona is the best forecast of what mandatory E-Verify would look like without a legalization program. Implemented in January 2008, there are three significant outcomes from that Arizona law: Undocumented workers did not go home and most have moved into the cash economy; employers are coaching workers about how to get around the photo screening tool, the only mechanism to address ID theft; and half of employers are not using E-Verify for new hires despite penalties that could result in the loss of their business license.

Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act, a decision that deepens the debate between between supporters and detractors of mandatory state and federal E-Verify programs.

The Colorado Independent

It’s up to Congress now to tackle the thorny issue of immigration reform after President Obama made his case Tuesday standing on the U.S. border, according to reform supporters.

Obama traveled to the border at El Paso, Texas to call for enactment of comprehensive immigration reform, an issue that both Obama and his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, have so far been unsuccessful in accomplishing.

“So one way to strengthen the middle class in America is to reform the immigration system so that there is no longer a massive underground economy that exploits a cheap source of labor while depressing wages for everybody else. I want incomes for middle-class families to rise again,” Obama says. “I want prosperity in this country to be widely shared. I want everybody to be able to reach that American dream. And that’s why immigration reform is an economic imperative. It’s an economic imperative.

“And reform will also help to make America more competitive in the global economy. Today, we provide students from around the world with visas to get engineering and computer science degrees at our top universities,” the president adds.

Independent advocates praised Obama’s remarks, and now want lawmakers to step up to the plate.

“The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) Educational Fund appreciates President Obama traveling to the border city of El Paso, Texas to speak this afternoon about the important issue of comprehensive immigration reform,” the organization, which facilitates Latinos in the American political process, says in a statement released after the president’s appearance. “He reiterated in his remarks today that border security is a top priority and is indeed being addressed, but not at the expense of fixing our broken immigration system.

“The President has listened to the community and is clearly ready to move forward. It is now time for Congress to do the same,” the NALEO statement adds.

A prominent group which represents U.S. cities also calls for immigration reform.

The mushrooming number of immigration statutes at the state and local level, such as Arizona’s controversial state law, demands federal action on the matter, according to the National League of Cities (NLC).

NLC calls for the president and Congress to overcome their differences and find a way to move forward. Reform will provide an avenue for cities to move illegal immigrants out of the shadows and allow them to become fully contributing participants within their communities, the organization says in a statement.

“Immigration has been a source for economic growth and innovation. From its founding, the nation has been strengthened socially, culturally and economically by recent immigrants,” says James Mitchell Jr., president of NLC and a councilmember in Charlotte, N.C.

“Our nation needs to remain open to new sources of ideas and inspiration if we are to compete in the global market,” he adds.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also praised Obama’s approach, saying that immigration reform must mean more than secure U.S. borders.

“No one can deny we have made significant strides in securing our border –- with more border patrol agents, better surveillance technology and a stronger fence than ever before. Democrats know there’s more work to be done, which is why we successfully fought a Republican budget that would have fired border agents and put our safety at risk. But as the President said today, to fix our broken immigration system, we must honestly assesses our immigration policies and their impact on our economy, legal system and local governments, and pursue a comprehensive solution to the problem,” Reid says.

“We need an effective and efficient legal immigration system. Part of securing our nation is knowing who is already here, so we must require the 11 million undocumented immigrants to register with the government, pay taxes and fines, learn English and go to the back of the line before they can achieve legal status,” he adds. “We should give the best and brightest students from around the globe –- who come here to take advantage of our world-class education system –- a chance to start businesses that employ American workers.”

Scott Nance is the editor and publisher of the news site The Washington Current. He has covered Congress and the federal government for more than a decade.

The Democratic Daily

Pretty much wherever you find efforts to tighten immigration laws in the United States, you find John Tanton–or more likely these days, one of the groups he founded.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform was in Arizona when that state wrote its famous senate bill to crack down on immigration. They were in the Colorado Capitol last November when the Republican Study Committee of Colorado hosted a forum on immigration reform.

At that time, Republicans in the Colorado Legislature told The Colorado Independent they planned to pursue Arizona-style legislation in Colorado, a position they backed down from over the next couple of months as it became clear that Arizona had paid a hefty price for its own legislation.

When FAIR came to Colorado, The Independent reported on
FAIR’s ties to Tanton and on Tanton’s ties to racist organizations as well as on his propensity for racially tinged statements.

Sunday, The New York Times published a major cover-story profile of Tanton, noting his liberal roots–as a supporter of Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club–and chronicling his steady movement toward white nationalist sympathies. including his ties to the Ku Klux Klan, holocaust deniers and those who claim white people are genetically superior to other races.

Tanton was concerned all along as he established his network of anti-immigration organizations that the groups and its supporters could be perceived as racist if they weren’t careful. In the end, a FAIR executive told The Times, it was Tanton himself who brought such infamy to the cause.

From The Times:

“The fear was that one ugly person could tar the larger movement, and sadly, ironically, it turned out that person was John Tanton,” said Patrick Burns, who was then FAIR’s deputy director.

But if anything, Dr. Tanton grew more emboldened to challenge taboos. He increasingly made his case against immigration in racial terms.

“One of my prime concerns,” he wrote to a large donor, “is about the decline of folks who look like you and me.” He warned a friend that “for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority, and a clear one at that.”

Dr. Tanton acknowledged the shift from his earlier, colorblind arguments, but the “uncomfortable truth,” he wrote, was that those arguments had failed. With a million or more immigrants coming each year — perhaps a third illegally — he warned, “The end may be nearer than we think.”

The Colorado Independent

“I recently received a forwarded email that purportedly was from a government school teacher from California lamenting the massive waste in the government run school system. I had no issue with the accuracy of the waste report, but the teacher then launch into an attack on illegal immigrants as one of the causes of this problem. He also said that an entitlement mentality had created a Juvenal delinquency problem within the schools. This was again blamed on the immigrant children. And then finally he/she dismissed a guest worker program as a solution to illegal immigration.”

“I know there are billions of dollars wasted in our government schools, especially in the Los Angeles area where the average cost per student per year, when all costs are taken into account, is ,000+. The government run school system must be abolished if we have any long term hope of having a decently educated public. Our founders knew that a well-educated populace was required to sustain our Republic.”

“However, whoever this unidentified teacher is, he or she is dead wrong about the guest worker program.”

“I would point out it is NOT the fault of immigrants, illegal or not, that there is free food, free or subsidized housing, free medical care, etc., etc., etc.”

“That’s being done by Congress and our state legislatures.”

Read the complete Commentary by the Chair of The Libertarian Party @http://www.lp.org/blogs/mark-hinkle/who-to-blame-for-the-illegal-immigration-mess-immigrants-or-congress

Independent Political Report

PSLweb.org:

By: Abel Macias

Say no to detentions and deportations!

On Nov. 5, as workers were coming home from work, they came across a rally of over 150 students, youth and workers who were demanding an end to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in their community.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation had called for the rally after a young student shared her experience at a PSL class on socialism.

She told the PSL members the story of how federal ICE agents, under the direction of Homeland Security and the Obama administration, came to her home and took away members of her family after having raided her father’s workplace. Over 40 workers were arrested, including the owner of the bakery who was able to post bail a few days later. As of this writing, the father was still in custody and facing federal charges. (signonsandiego.com)

The corporate media failed to cover the aftermath of this raid. Fortunately, the daughter of the detained worker shared with PSL members how the ICE raids had torn her family apart and left them without any source of income.

The recently established San Diego branch of PSL was able to quickly respond to the ICE raid and called for a rally. PSL members reached out to other progressive organizations in the area and, in a matter of days, pulled together a rally to demand an end to the deportation and detentions of undocumented workers.

Under capitalism, the ruling class seeks to isolate undocumented workers from the rest of the working class in the United States. The PSL recognizes this divide-and-conquer tactic and works diligently to build solidarity across all sectors of the working class, not allowing race, sexual orientation, citizenship or gender to divide our power.

A young, multinational crowd turned out for the rally. The success of this rally illustrates the power of an organized and disciplined working-class party in fighting back against racist, ruling-class oppression.

The workers’ struggle knows no borders!

Independent Political Report