Uncle Sam's War Against The American People

Originally Posted At Forbes.com
By Lawrence A. Hunter, Ph.D.
January 7, 2012

E-Verify: Another Federal Assault On Freedom

Feds Looking To Off-Load Immigration Enforcement Costs Onto Small Business

There is an effort underway in the Congress (e.g., H.R. 2885, The Legal Workforce Act, recently reported out of the House Judiciary Committee) to off-load enforcement of federal immigration policy onto private businesses. It’s called E-Verify, a requirement that would mandate every U.S. employer to use free federal databases to confirm the legal status of a new hire.  These data bases not only are demonstrably inaccurate, they are especially so in throwing up false positives that misidentify citizens and legal aliens as “illegal”—the collateral damage of the war on illegals, which doesn’t bother Members of Congress because it isn’t they who get hurt.

E-Verify would cost employers billions of dollars in associated expenses and business disruption according to various groups that have examined the data.  And, it would subject “non-compliant” employers to an outrageously punitive 10 years in prison—twice as severe as the 5-to-8 year sentence for attempted murder of a federal officer—and monetary penalties of up to $25,000 for each violation.

E-Verify constitutes a kind of “cheap authority” for politicians (reminiscent of “cheap grace” for clerics—forgiveness without repentance, redemption without atonement), allowing lawmakers to enact impractical and punitive measures without paying the political and financial costs of implementing the policies.  Too harsh an assessment?  Not at all.  The fact that many Members of Congress who themselves are required to use the E-Verify system refuse to do so reveals the hypocrisy of the “do-as-we-say-not-as-we-do” Congress.

E-Verify is government over-reach at its worst. It is an arrogant exercise of power without having to assume responsibility or accountability for implementing the law. It constitutes impressing private citizens into the federal police apparatus and imposing a hidden tax on businesses. It is no less than federal conscription, dragooning private businesses into becoming the enforcers of federal government policy. It is another manifestation of the federal government’s growing proclivity to expand its routine use of force and violence while outsourcing their implementation (from mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan to rendition to foreign countries). It is an affront to the Constitution and an assault on the rights of individuals.

Apart from the need of border jumpers to avoid border-controls to gain entry into the country, once here, they also must continually traverse numerous government-patrolled pathways in their daily lives.  These bureaucratic pipelines offer the federal government myriad opportunities to detect and deport illegals.  The most obvious conduits of opportunity for detection are the various state and local public services illegal immigrants seek to consume—public schools, welfare, the DMV labyrinth from driver’s licensing to infractions of driving laws and so forth. The refusal of the federal government to work with states to erect sensible roadblocks along these numerous pathways to catch illegal aliens reveals the hypocrisy of the federal government’s war on illegals.  The chicken-hawks that populate the Congress clearly prefer to force private businessmen to booby trap their own hiring process, harming a lot of innocents in the process, while cowardly lawmakers remain safely in the rear with a gun at the backs of the private firms they commandeer to use as cannon fodder on the front lines of their ill-conceived and mismanaged war on illegals.

The Supreme Court has long held that the Fifth Amendment protects alien persons whose presence in this country is unlawful from invidious discrimination by the Federal Government as well as the states (Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67, 77 (1976)).  Moreover, the Court held specifically (Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)) that states on their own may not deny public education to children residing illegally in the United States.  It is, however, very unlikely the courts would strike down any effort by Congress (which has constitutionally exclusive responsibility over immigration) to prohibit illegal residents from working or obtaining welfare benefits, including federal efforts to solicit or entice the states to cooperate in such efforts through the use of federal grants and mandates. Nor would the courts likely preclude Congress from enacting a coopertive effort with the states to identify the illegal-alien parents of illegal-alien students enrolled in public schools as long as it was implemented in a non-invidious manner.

Yet, Congress refuses to deny the services of the welfare state to illegals.  Instead, it wants private citizens to do its dirty work by denying illegals a job, collateral damage to innocent citizens and legal immigrants notwithstanding.  For example, when Congress passed comprehensive welfare reform in 1996, it excluded illegal aliens from eligibility to receive “federal public benefits.” Yet, within a year, Congress had restored SSI, food stamp and social-services eligibility for many illegals.  Also, illegals are not precluded from receiving healthcare welfare under ObamaCare.  And, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and other independent research have demonstrated that claims by illegal aliens have been a significant factor in the rise of Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) disbursements despite the fact that illegal aliens are ineligible for the tax benefits.

Let’s face it, E-Verify is the software equivalent of metal detectors, body scanners, iris scanners and facial recognition devices applied to job applicants, and Congress is looking to conscript private businessmen and business women to play TSA in the labor market.  Make no mistake, if the principle of mandatory E-Verify is established to force private firms to do the government’s bidding of enforcing federal policy designed to stop illegals from working—it’s OK if illegals become clients of the welfare state because that feathers the nest of politicians and bureaucrats, just don’t let them be gainfully employed—it won’t be long before the federal government is expanding the imposition of the E-Verify principle and technique to impress private employers into fighting the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, in short Uncle Sam’s expanding war against the American People.

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