Thread: Bills target hiring of illegal workers

January 18, 2009


Bills target hiring of illegal workers

Lawmakers: Measures would make jobs available for Hoosiers

By Bill Ruthhart and Tania E. Lopez
bill.ruthhart@indystar.com

Miguel Bautista is an illegal immigrant, but that never prevented him from finding drywall jobs.

With the economy in tatters, however, he's now lucky to land work once a week, not nearly enough to support his family of four.

A lifelong Hoosier, Jim Jensma has spent years working as a machine operator at a Muncie auto plant that is shutting down in April -- and he's not confident about finding work in the midst of a deep recession.

Of the two, Bautista soon might find it even harder to earn a living here because Indiana lawmakers have renewed an effort to keep illegal workers from taking jobs from Jensma and other Americans.

With the competition for work heating up and unemployment in Indiana higher than 7 percent, the lawmakers think last year's failed attempts at immigration reforms have a shot in this year's legislative session.

"The current state of our economy and the level of unemployment says we need every job we can find for Hoosiers," said Rep. Vern Tincher, D-Riley, who authored one of the bills. "Citizens really want to see this passed into law, because they feel if there are jobs available, Hoosiers should have the first opportunity. This would do that."

Three bills before the state legislature this year would punish employers that knowingly hire undocumented workers.

Under the legislation, employers that repeatedly fail to use E-Verify -- a federal system to check workers' legal status -- would have their business licenses suspended.

M. Esther Barber, executive director of the Mexican Civic Association of Indiana, is afraid the legislation would do more harm than good, leading employers to discriminate against all Hispanics, regardless of their legal status.

"I'm ready to fight this," she said. "Employers will be afraid to hire Hispanics."

She'll have a powerful ally in the fight: the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, which is opposed to the legislation because it views the idea of stripping a business of its license as overkill.

Gov. Mitch Daniels also is wary of heaping new regulations on businesses at a time when the economy is weak.

A question of fairness

For some, clamping down is an issue of fairness -- and the rule of law.

"The law is the law. That should be the bottom line," said Jensma, 46, a machine operator at Borg-Warner Automotive. "They say we don't want to do the work these illegal immigrants do, but those places aren't even giving us the opportunity."

Wes Dowenton, 60, an unemployed auto mechanic who lives on the Southside, would like such an opportunity.

"People who are citizens and here legally should have the first shot at jobs," Dowenton said. "Employers hiring illegal immigrants for dirt cheap -- that's not fair to other individuals who live here and have been here."

Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, one of the lawmakers pushing immigration legislation, said he has little sympathy for the struggles of illegal immigrants.

"If you're illegal, you're illegal," Kruse said. "You shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be working here, you're breaking our law and you should return home."

Sen. Mike Delph, the Carmel Republican who introduced the legislation last year, said his goal is to punish employers, not immigrants.

"It absolutely changes the discussion," Delph said of the downturn. "More people are seeking employment, more people are competing for wages and there is less opportunity out there for law-abiding citizens."

That's what worries Barber, who also thinks lawmakers' chances are better this year.

"Last year when we were talking about this, there were enough jobs for everybody, and employers were short on labor and were using people who were undocumented," she said. "Right now, a lot of people are losing jobs, and U.S. citizens need them."

A legislative trend

Legislatures in at least a dozen states are working this year to pass similar legislation.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least seven states already have passed laws that punish employers for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. Overall, more than 1,500 bills on illegal immigration were introduced by state legislatures in 2008, more than triple the number in 2006.

"As other states start implementing these measures, states that don't are going to become sanctuaries for illegal aliens coming to where they can receive preferential treatment," said Carl Little, a Boonville resident who works as legal counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a Washington-based organization that helps lawmakers draft immigration legislation.

"It's going to cost taxpayers of those states lots of money."

Although the legislation won approval in both chambers of the General Assembly last year, whether enough support exists this year for it to win approval remains to be seen.

Business interests played a big role in its defeat last year, and getting the legislation adopted will mean overcoming the state chamber's opposition.

"It doesn't make any sense that for three violations, you can put a company out of business and all the people who are employed there," said George Raymond, the chamber's vice president for human resources and labor relations. "That's like throwing the baby out with the bath water."

Daniels also is lukewarm to the idea.

"Last year, I said we better be very careful making it any harder to hire people in Indiana, and that's much more true now than it was then," the Republican governor said. "You won't find this on my priority list, but we'll see what the legislature does."

Tough future ahead

Any crackdown on illegal immigrants would come as a growing number of them -- an estimated 110,000 live in Indiana -- have decided to return to their native countries in search of work.

Illegal immigrants still employed here are earning less and sending less money home.

Reports from the central bank in Mexico -- the country that produces the largest number of illegal immigrants in the U.S. -- show that migrant remittances, or dollars sent home, dropped by nearly 7 percent in the fall.

Bautista, 29, who emigrated illegally 10 years ago from a shantytown in Toluca, Mexico, said he doesn't know how much longer he can afford to stay in Indiana.

At 7 a.m. each day, Bautista walks three blocks from his two-bedroom apartment in Greenwood to the nearest pay phone. There, he calls his employer, asking whether he needs drywall help that day.

Lately, he's lucky if the answer is yes once a week.

"I have three months of only working once a week, and I've gone out to look for work," Bautista said. "It's not that I don't want a job, it's just that there aren't any."

Additional Facts
PROPOSALS
Three lawmakers have introduced legislation that would punish employers for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. Under their proposals:

Employers would lose their state business licenses on either their third or fourth offense of hiring illegal immigrants and failing to check their legal status through the federal government's E-Verify system.

Producing a document not issued by a government entity that gives the perception of being issued by the government would be a Class D felony.

Intentionally concealing an illegal immigrant from detection for commercial gain would be a Class A misdemeanor. Penalties increase to a Class D felony for a second unrelated offense or if more than five illegal immigrants are involved. A third offense would be a Class C felony.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION COSTS

The estimated impact illegal immigration has on state spending:

Total cost: Estimated at $259 million per year in 2006 and projected to climb to $434 million by 2010 and $753 million by 2020.

Education: Estimates based on 2004 data suggest students who emigrated illegally cost Indiana $85.9 million, while students born in the United States to illegal immigrants cost the state $120.3 million.

Health care: Estimates from four hospitals in the Indianapolis area placed unreimbursed health-care costs associated with treating illegal immigrants at $2.7 million per year.

Sources: Federation for American Immigration Reform, Indiana Hospital Association

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http://www.indystar.com/article/2009011 ... /901180407

Gov. Mitch Daniels also is wary of heaping new regulations on businesses at a time when the economy is weak.

Well, guv, all I can say is you do not really understand the law of supply and demand. If you have increasing supply of workers with a diminishing demand for workers, it comes down to making sure actual citizens are first in line for jobs (and the myth that there are jobs Americans won't do is not washing well these days. You do what you can to put food on the table.)
And may I ask where the processing of state employee payrolls is done? Worker identities are continually being offshored for cheap labor, and from this quote, apparently that concept is just hunky-dory.
Since we are supposed to be the consumers the rest of the world depends on, is it not a simple concept that once the consumer's ability to consume (like a paycheck) has been eliminated, consumption will crash and that includes all those nifty and "healthy" products continually being slammed down our throats.

What gets me is the fact they always like to bring up the fact that cracking down on illegals will cause employers from hiring Hispanics. Maybe if Hispanics were more vocal about illegals and how bad they are making the legal Hispanic immigrants look they would not have such a problem. Here in South Florida they are the ones who hire them.

jimpasz, Thanks for posting the complete story.
The star pulled it sometiime last night.

this is the reason I quit the star over two years ago.

I have linked to your post so citizens can read it.

M. Esther Barber, executive director of the Mexican Civic Association of Indiana, is afraid the legislation would do more harm than good, leading employers to discriminate against all Hispanics, regardless of their legal status.

"I'm ready to fight this," she said. "Employers will be afraid to hire Hispanics."

What a bunch of b.s. Ms Barber knows that E-Verify doesnt discriminate against anyone. It cant. E-Verify is the most effective and accurate way to verify whether or not someone is here legally. Ms Barber is afraid that illegal aliens wont be able to find jobs.

It won't do me any good-- to go into a rant here about the absolutely STUPID arguments from people about how harmful this is to innocents. They are the same people who want amnesty and want to destitute America because they are NOT AMERICANS--they are HISPANICS who are ethnic patriots. They do not care a hoot about us. They want America for their families and friends and will lie, cheat and steal to accomplish it. I am fed up and I get angrier every day. I am at the stage where I actually HOPE there is some violence to startle the unthinking STUPID people who are in Congress.

Misterbill: I agree that they are not Americans. I have never seen any other ethnic group have flags of their countries on their vehicles as much as they do. The ones that burn me are the Cubans. They are all Cuban Americans even those born in the United States. You should read the comments after articles in the Sun Sentinel and you will see how fed up people in South Florida are with it.

Welcome to Alipac indyeast

feel free to write articles here !!!!

Originally Posted by jimpasz

Welcome to Alipac indyeast

feel free to write articles here !!!!

Ditto and welcome!

The story and affect needs to be spread. I come from a town that police estimate 1/3 to 1/2 of our population are illegal aliens. We have an official pop. of 92,000.