Courtney Combs: E-Verify does work, is needed

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1:43 PM Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Earlier this month, I was shocked to learn about the illegal employment of 25 workers at the Krispy Kreme Doughnuts factory in Monroe.

We have a situation where foreign lawbreakers were taking 25 jobs from legal Americans, not to mention they were in contact with food and possibly never vaccinated for illnesses and/or received medical attention for certain ailments. Unfortunately, even more incidents like this one have proven this is not an isolated event, but a nationwide problem.

A recent federal investigation found that 1,600 of the 4,500 employees at factories in Los Angeles for the clothing company American Apparel got their jobs using “suspect and not valid” eligibility documentation. American Apparel is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States. For a company that prides itself on clothes “Made in the U.S.A.,” it seems their clothes are not made by legal U.S. citizens.

With unemployment in Ohio now 11.1 percent and 9.5 percent nationally, we must hold unscrupulous employers accountable for hiring undocumented workers. E-Verify is a tool that would aid employers to ensure their workers are here legally.

The federal program has seen a rapid growth in use this year. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 1,000 employers are signing up each week on average and employment checks are approaching 200,000 a week. In this year alone, 5.5 million workers have been checked by employers through the E-Verify system. In 2008, 6.6 million checks were made, twice the number in 2007.

Critics will claim the system is faulty and Americans don’t want the jobs illegal immigrants are taking, but the facts show otherwise. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, which administers E-Verify (not the Social Security Administration), reports that 96.1 percent of all employees sent through E-Verify are confirmed as work authorized.

The H-2A program which farmers use to recruit foreign workers to do temporary or seasonal work saw 887 Americans apply for the H-2A permits in the final three months of 2008. In the first three months of 2009, 1,799 Americans applied for 726 jobs. The myth that Americans won’t do certain jobs has gone out the window with this current recession.

I applaud the federal government for recognizing this problem and adding a mandatory requirement that all federal contractors use E-Verify to a Department of Homeland Security spending bill. However, this is the first step down a long road of immigration reform in this county.

Although I am encouraged about the introduction of New York Sen. Charles Schumer’s immigration reform bill this September, such legislation faces an uphill battle and the prospect of political gridlock that has doomed past reform. Such politicking is why such reform must come from the individual states.

That is why I introduced the Ohio Job Integrity Protection Act, or House Bill 184, this past May. This legislation would require the mandatory use of E-Verify for public and private employers in Ohio. So far this legislation has received two hearings in the House Judiciary Committee. People from all over Ohio showed up to testify in support of the bill. I have been promised by the chair of the committee that the bill will continue to receive additional hearings and consideration this fall.

Now is not the time for partisan bickering in Washington or Columbus. We must work towards getting a real solution to this nation’s immigration problem. Otherwise, as we have seen here in Butler County, legal Americans will continue to slip through the cracks as certain companies continue to hire cheap illegal labor.

State Rep. Courtney Combs, R-Hamilton, represents the Ohio House’s 54th District.

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The problem with "legal documented immigrants" is that those documents should be now be invalid as we all realize the problems that such create when they vanish who knows where after their visas, permits, etc. expire. Tjhere should be a moratorium on ALL ENTRIES INTO THE USA until the authorities realize what "legal" means, and what their jobs are to enforce our laws.

A
11:13 PM, 4/1/2010

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Whats being done to enforced the inmigration law for employers that knowingly hired ilegal alients? I work in the food industry my employer rarely hires americans, only hired ilegal alliens and do so, knowingly, this people are ilegal and some feel that they should have the same rights, as american citizens some even owe homes and have been able to buy, with the help of some unscroupoulous loan officer or bank that have help with, government assitance to buy homes, how can that be posible?

Isabella
2:33 PM, 8/26/2009

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Representative Combs, your assertion that un-vaccinated immigrants were in contact with your food is without merit and distracts from your point. This statement proves how you lack real evidence on the real economic impact of foreign workers. Foremost, they prevent companies from outsourcing US jobs. Secondly, lower labor costs leads to lower prices. Whenever consumers are ready to pay higher prices for their goods and corporate loopholes are closed than this debate will never cease to end.

Jacqueline B.
3:52 PM, 8/21/2009

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The root of the problem is exploitation of foreign workers in Latin America . Look to your Farm Bill that subsidizes corn, which is dumped on Mexican markets where Mexican farmers cannot compete in this uneven field. Look to the multinational companies that pay very low wages to our southern neighbors for their work. These corporations make huge profits. Most undocumented workers in the US are economic refugees, and should be credited for their work, and given a path to citizenship.

Don Bryant
7:44 AM, 8/7/2009

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Combs is targeting a new group but his comments reflect a replay of the same old bigotry and should be treated as such.

Chico Rico
8:54 PM, 8/6/2009

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