Florida Immigrant Protests Lead to American Worker Hires
Submitted by roblimo on Tue, 2006-04-11 20:22.

http://www.suncoastblog.com/node/81

My source for this -- a good friend -- must remain anonymous because there's no way a blog post is important enough to cost someone his job. In this case, the job is in the office of a Florida company that supplies live plants to retailers all over the U.S. and has historically relied on an "all-illegal" greenhouse work force, some of whom decided to take off from work to protest possible new laws that may make illegal immigration illegal -- and promptly got replaced by new workers because they did. Now we come to the amusing part: Half the new workers are Americans, with more American hires on the way.


My friend says his employer can easily survive without illegal immigrant workers; that the company can and should automate many operations that are now done by hand since illegal workers have been so easy to come by and are so disposable that it seemed pointless to invest in machinery or computers instead of treating people like machines -- and cheap ones, at that. In the end, though, he believes the company would be more efficient, and more profitable, if it became more mechanized.

Meanwhile, he noticed that workers who were fired because they took Monday off to attend anti-immigration enforcement protests were replaced immediately. It seems that even when official statistics say there is virtually no unemployment here, finding people willing to do low-key agricultural work is pitifully easy, and that at least half of the people now applying for (and getting) jobs at his company are American citizens.

"Suddenly we're hearing southern twangs around here," he says.

The main reason for this sudden shift to American (and legal immigrant) workers is fear that current laws about checking workers' Social Security numbers may staqrt being enforced. Right now, employers say, "The guy had a Social Security card that looked fine. We didn't know it was a fake." That is a lame dodge. It is pitifully easy to check whether a Social Security number is valid. All it takes is a phone call. Employers who hire more than a few people at a time can do SSN verification over the Internet. In fact, they can upload their entire payrolls -- up to 250,000 at a time -- and get results back the next business day.

There are already laws against hiring illegal aliens, but they are not enforced. Penalties include substantial fines and, in criminal cases, jail time. The key is that an employer must "knowingly" hire illegals, and it seems that lax (or no) verification procedures are the dodge currently being used by shady companies to keep their executives from being fined or imprisoned.

Requiring employers to verify SSNs for all employees would change the immigration landscape. Many companies (including the one I work for) do this already on a voluntary basis.
My friend says, "it wouldn't take many executives doing the perp walk" to keep most companies from hiring illegal aliens.

Yes, it would be nice to have a more coherent immigration policy -- one that allows people to come here from Mexico and other less-prosperous countries legally, learn English, and become part of American society.

But first, we need to start enforcing immigration, Social Security, and IRS regulations we already have on the books. Politicians who refuse to do this -- and refuse to fund enforcement efforts -- must be thrown out of office and replaced by ones who are not only sympathetic