Thread: PA: Illegal workers prompt Ward to resubmit bill

Illegal workers prompt Ward to resubmit bill

By Richard Gazarik
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Wednesday, December 29, 2010


State Sen. Kim Ward of Hempfield said she will reintroduce a bill in January that would require contractors to electronically verify that any employees working on publicly funded projects are not illegal immigrants.

The Republican lawmaker's action occurred a day after state police detained eight illegal workers from Honduras and El Salvador on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in New Stanton. The men were traveling from Maryland to Jeannette to work on a building project for Homes Build Hope.

The organization is a nonprofit agency that builds single-family homes for low-income families and receives public funding.

Ward will introduce the proposal when the General Assembly begins its new session Jan. 18.

In 2009, Ward introduced Senate Bill 1149, the Construction Industry Employment Verification Act, that would require contractors and subcontractors to electronically verify the Social Security numbers of all workers.The proposed legislation died in the Labor and Industry Committee.

"I didn't see any opposition to it," Ward said. "In the end, it just died."

Ward said her legislation is not aimed at singling out immigrant workers.

"My bill does not say you have to be a citizen. ... You just have to be legally entitled to work," she said. "I'm not beating up immigrants."

Steve Catranel, the general contractor for the Jeannette project, said the workers were hired by O.C. Cluss of Uniontown, a subcontractor, but workers identities were checked daily.

Nevertheless, Ward said workers can obtain bogus Social Security numbers and false identifications.

"This is why they should check E-Verify system at Homeland Security," she added. "It takes absolutely no time to do it. Fake Social Security numbers and fake IDs would be addressed through the E-Verify system."

E-Verify is an Internet-based system that allows employers to immediately check the legal status of a foreign-born employee. U.S. law requires companies to verify foreign workers' status before hiring them.

"We can't afford to have people on these jobs who are not qualified to do it. We need to fix it," Ward said.

Ward's bill is one of several introduced in the last session that died on the legislative grapevine.

Rep. John Galloway, a Bucks County Democrat, introduced two measures this year that also would have required electronic verification of workers' status.

Under the proposal, contractors who violated the law would have lost the chance to bid on state contracts and would have lose their state licenses, which gives them the ability to bid on private construction contracts.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 36 percent of workers in the construction trades nationwide are illegal immigrants. Critics estimate there could be as many as 35,000 illegal aliens working in Pennsylvania's construction industry as carpenters, framers, bricklayers, cement finishers and drywall hangers.

Contractors use illegal workers to undercut competitors by lowering construction costs because they pay immigrants lower wages for jobs that have no benefits.

Illegal immigrants have been used to help build dorms at the state's universities.

In 2006, the state Department of Labor and Industry investigated the use of Hispanic construction workers building dorms at Slippery Rock University.

Some of the workers had Social Security numbers belonging to residents of Massachusetts, Texas and Ohio, including one man who had been dead more than a decade.

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GO PENNSYLVANIA! GO STATES! GO AMERICANS! Lets get r done. We need an all court press on all levels and we will solve this problem once and for all. E-Verify, end to anchor baby citizenship, streamlined deportation procedures, states with AZ immigration laws, 800,000 existing trained, sworn, ready and able state and local law enforcements officers making the arrests and detainment for deportations, imposing fines and property confiscations to pay for it, completed fence, no amnesty, no Dream Act, no guest worker permits, no hand-outs, no jobs, no public assistance, no free health care, more boots on the borders with lots of deputized citizens to help out and lawsuit to hold those responsible accountable for the damage, pass the FairTax, and THIS PROBLEM WILL BE SOLVED, once and for all, never to rear its ugly head in our country ever again.

Some of the workers had Social Security numbers belonging to residents of Massachusetts, Texas and Ohio, including one man who had been dead more than a decade.

This is why we need to consider any fraudulant use of a SSN to be identity theft.