There seems to be near consensus in Washington that the key to controlling illegal immigration is to make it as difficult as possible for illegal aliens to find work here. At least that was the idea when Congress passed employer sanctions in 1986 with the intention of penalizing employers who hire illegal aliens.

But there has always been a catch. Employers had no real way of knowing if workers were here legally, so it was hard to hold them accountable when they got caught hiring illegal aliens (when the government even bothered to enforce the law at all). In recent years the E-Verify system has allowed employers, on a voluntary basis, to electronically verify a prospective worker’s Social Security number (much like a merchant verifies a credit card) so they can avoid hiring illegal aliens in the first place.

Some 70,000 employers now use E-Verify and seem pretty happy with the system. So it would seem that Congress would be anxious not only to reauthorize the E-Verify program, which is set to expire in November, but to expand it and make its use mandatory for all employers.

Not so fast. Reauthorization of E-Verify is being delayed by a bunch of amendments in both houses. In the Senate, Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) is blocking reauthorization, demanding the inclusion of an amendment to “recapture” visas – mostly for foreign workers – going back to 1992.

Thus, the price Menendez is setting for reauthorization of a program that protects American jobs is the admission of hundreds of thousands of new foreign workers to compete with American workers for jobs in a recessionary economy. Even in an election year in which the dismal state of our economy appears to be voters’ greatest concern, it appears the concerns of powerful special interests still come first.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 29th, 2008 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Politics .