Punish Illegal Employers
Now that the election is over, conservative smoke and mirror politics is evaporating right before our eyes. Gas prices have dropped to $2.60 in North Texas. Fox News has stopped spamming crime stories. Retailers are slashing holiday prices and seeing record sales.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, however, has returned to inflammatory talk about the border. Abbott is parroting Donald Trump’s words about undocumented crossings. Abbott falsely claims Texas is facing an “invasion.”
When Donald used this phrase, he inspired a Plano teenager to buy a semi-automatic rifle and travel to El Paso. In El Paso the teen murdered 23 Americans and injured 23 others. He wanted to defend Texas against the fake “invasion.”
Abbot is playing with fire. We know this language inspires domestic terrorists. A Federal jury just convicted two of Donald’s supporters. Prosecutors presented evidence in court that Donald inspired them to join a seditious conspiracy against the United States of America on January 6, 2021.
Abbott is diverting our attention away from illegal employment. Gregg Abbot needs to tell his big corporate donors to kick their addiction to illegal labor. Unscrupulous employers entice Mexicans and Latin Americans to the U.S.
Why would businesses hire illegal workers? Falsely documented workers don’t complain about working conditions or pay. They know they are one complaint away from being turned over to immigration officials. Corporate America illegally “imports” this docile workforce.
If undocumented immigrants couldn’t get jobs, they wouldn’t come. Greg Abbott and the Republican dominated legislature could solve the problem by simply enforcing existing employment laws and punishing illegal employers.
Abbott and the Legislature could strengthen these laws by requiring E-Verify. It is a Federal Website that Congress created in 1996: https://www.e-verify.gov. Here is what the website has to offer employers.
“In the E-Verify process, employers create cases based on information taken from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. E-Verify then electronically compares that information to records available to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA). The employer usually receives a response within a few seconds either confirming the employee’s employment eligibility or indicating that the employee needs to take further action to complete the case.”
The election is over. If undocumented border crossing is a problem, let’s find a solution that works for us, not the politicians. Mandating E-Verify would be a more cost effective way to shutting down illegal employment in Texas.
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