By CHRIS POWELL
Democratic U.S. senators, led by Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, the ranking minority member of the Senate’s Permanent Committee on Investigations, held a hearing at the Capitol the other day to publicize mistakes and misconduct by federal immigration agents, particularly their arrests of U.S. citizens and their excessive use of force. The testimony, as Blumenthal said, was “troubling,” more so since members of the Senate’s Republican majority declined to attend lest they help embarrass the Trump administration.
Don’t ask government employees if state should raise taxes
Hartford hints at best way to solve housing shortage
More ‘public benefits’ bunk; and the big liability machine
But everyone should be embarrassed.
Republicans should acknowledge that immigration enforcement has gotten reckless when U.S. citizens are not only being arrested but sometimes detained for days before their citizenship is established and they are released.
Democrats, including Blumenthal, should acknowledge that the immigration mess and its cruelty are largely their party’s fault, arising from their last national administration’s opening the borders, allowing millions of foreigners to enter without review, and claiming that nothing could stop it except new laws. When the Trump administration began enforcing the laws as they were, illegal entries were quickly brought way down.
Immigration law enforcement is necessary to protect the country, to ensure that immigrants are committed to a democratic and secular political culture, not theocratic fascism, and to restore fairness to the immigration system. But immigration raids and the resulting cruelty could be avoided by adopting a few simple policies.
First, Congress could require all employers to use the federal government’s internet-based “e-Verify” system of confirming a job applicant’s legal standing to work in the United States. The system compares employment forms submitted by applicants to employers against federal government records to confirm eligibility for employment. If an applicant’s records don’t match, an employer must not hire him.
The system isn’t foolproof but conscientious people can correct its mistakes. It’s not too much to demand that people maintain copies of their birth certificates or certificates of authorization to work in the United States.
Second, since it’s already a federal crime to hire illegal immigrants knowingly, enforcement should concentrate on employers rather than grabbing people off the street. Many employers too easily accept the word of applicants that they are legally entitled to work. Employers should be required to make job applicants produce proof of citizenship or eligibility to work. Nothing might discourage illegal immigration like the well-publicized prosecution and imprisonment of a few dozen irresponsible employers in each state.
Third, federal law should forbid states from issuing identification documents, including driver’s licenses, unless the requesters prove their citizenship. Having long issued such identification documents to illegal immigrants, states like Connecticut have been deliberately facilitating illegal immigration.
Indeed, this racket may have started in New Haven in 2007 when the city introduced its Elm City Identification Card precisely to help illegal immigrants live in the city in violation of immigration law. Of course some people don’t drive and need some official form of identification other than a driver’s license, and states and municipalities should be able to provide it — but only when the applicant shows proof of citizenship or eligibility for long-term residency in the country.
And fourth, federal law should forbid providing any government services or benefits to illegal immigrants, including education, except for emergency medical care.
If such procedures were in place, illegal immigration might end peacefully, since as a practical matter living in the country illegally would become all but impossible. Illegal immigrants would strive to become legal fast or they would return to their native countries voluntarily without risking capture and deportation.
Of course most Democrats in Connecticut oppose effective immigration law enforcement. They refuse to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration and want state government to keep obstructing enforcement. This is part of the national Democratic scheme to use illegal immigrants to increase the population in Democratic areas and thus to increase the number of Democratic congressional and state legislative districts.
To most Democrats, gaining permanent control of the government is worth any amount of cruelty to their pawns.
——
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
-END-
Chris Powell column 