Thread: GALLEGLY: Secure Hispanic vote by preserving jobs

E-Verify protects legal immigrants from losing work to illegals

By Rep. Elton Gallegly

Friday, May 11, 2012

The Washington Times


There shouldn't be any secret to securing the Hispanic vote. Hispanic voters want the same things all American voters want: job security and opportunities for themselves, their children and their grandchildren.

Reaching out to the Hispanic population to gain votes does not mean granting amnesty to illegal immigrants. It means treating Hispanic citizens and legal residents the same as the rest of their American brethren.

MALDEF (the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund), LULAC (the League of United Latin American Citizens), La Raza and other pro-illegal-immigration groups want unfettered illegal immigration for their own selfish reasons, not to help Hispanic U.S. citizens and legal residents. Those groups are not pro-Hispanic. They are pro-illegal-immigration. Despite the rhetoric spouted by pro-illegal-immigration groups, Hispanics do not want open borders because Hispanics need the jobs that illegal immigrants take from them.

Here is what Hispanics say about illegal immigration, according to a February 2010 Zogby poll:

61 percent said illegal immigration is caused by inadequate enforcement.

65 percent said there are plenty of Americans available to do unskilled jobs; employers just need to pay more.

52 percent support enforcement to encourage illegal immigrants to go home.

The Zogby results are not surprising because illegal immigration mostly hurts those who can least afford to be hurt - those at the lower end of the economic spectrum.

The Pew Hispanic Center surveyed 1,220 self-described Hispanics and Latinos in December. Of those, 89 percent were citizens or legal residents. Forty-six percent were registered voters.

Unemployment is higher among Hispanics than among Americans as a whole, Pew reported in its overview. Unemployment in the Hispanic community rose nearly 5 percentage points, to 11 percent, from December 2007 to December 2011. The national unemployment rate rose from 5 percent to 8.5 percent in the same period.

As a result, median household wealth among Hispanics fell by two-thirds from 2005 to 2009, and the poverty rate for Hispanics between 2006 and 2010 increased nearly 6 percentage points, the highest for any group, Pew reported.

The Hispanic population is the largest minority group in the United States. Helping Hispanics raise their standard of living benefits the entire country.

One quick and easy way to help Hispanics and all Americans is to make E-Verify mandatory. E-Verify is an easy-to-use, accurate, computer-based employee-verification system that ensures employees have a legal right to work in the United States. Nearly 360,000 American employers voluntarily use E-Verify, and more than 2,700 new businesses sign up every week.

It matches a person's name, Social Security number and date of birth against Homeland Security Department and Social Security Administration databases. If the three fail to match, the person is denied employment. The program quickly confirms 99.5 percent of work-eligible employees.

E-Verify will help all Americans, but it will have the largest impact on low-income workers. It's not surprising, then, that a February Pulse Opinion Research poll found that 76 percent of likely minority voters, including Hispanics, support mandatory E-Verify for all American employers.

The Pew poll found that despite being in precarious straits, Hispanics are more optimistic about the future for themselves and their families than are Americans as a whole.

"Fully two-thirds (67 percent) of Latinos say they expect their financial situation to improve over the next year, compared with 58 percent of the general population who say the same," Pew reported. "Also, two-thirds (66 percent) of Latinos say they expect their children to eventually enjoy a standard of living that is better than theirs is now. By contrast, just 48 percent of the general public says the same."

Congress and the president have it within their power to help members of the Hispanic community realize a better future for themselves and their families. While the national unemployment rate in April was 8.1 percent (which was artificially low because it didn't count another 342,000 workers who were so discouraged they had stopped looking for work in April), the Department of Labor pegged the Hispanic unemployment rate unchanged at 10.3 percent.

The Legal Workforce Act, introduced by Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas, myself and Rep. Ken Calvert of California, would open up more than 7 million jobs for American citizens and legal residents. Many of those jobs would go to Hispanics, making their hope for a better tomorrow a reality.

It's what the voters - not the pro-illegal-immigration groups - want and deserve.

Rep. Elton Gallegly, California Republican, is chairman of the Immigration Policy and Enforcement Subcommittee.
One Old Vet

GALLEGLY: Secure Hispanic vote by preserving jobs - Washington Times

We need citizens to pick up copies of this and bombard every member of Congress with the message "Rep. Elton Gallegly is right about Hispanic voters and Marco Rubio is WRONG!"

W