Aiexpress – Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma and other GOP lawmakers have unveiled a plan to address the ongoing border crisis by expanding and repurposing a federal employment verification program. This initiative aims to tap into the frustrations surrounding the current situation at the border.
“Our border is being overrun by illegal aliens,” Toma said at a news conference Monday with eight other House Republicans. “It’s painfully clear at this point that our governor and our president are doing nothing about it.”
According to Representative John Doe, the legislation he is sponsoring, known as House Concurrent Resolution 2060, is considered to be one of the most stringent immigration laws ever drafted.
Toma, an aspiring member of Congress who immigrated from Romania, along with his fellow campaigners, aims to present the proposal to voters in the upcoming November ballot. The proposal entails compelling state, county, and municipal authorities to utilize the federal E-Verify system for verifying the immigration status of all license applicants. Additionally, the proposal includes a mandate for employers to employ the system when recruiting independent contractors and subcontractors.
Employers in general are already mandated by a state law in 2006 to utilize E-Verify when making new hires. Any individual who assists another person in obstructing the E-Verify process would be subject to a state felony charge.
According to him, the legislation allows for inquiries into the utilization of E-Verify and imposes substantial fines on employers who fail to comply with the law.
E-Verify is an online service that checks if someone is a citizen or an immigrant. It started out as a government pilot program in 1997. Even though Arizona passed a law in 2006, the Cato Institute found in 2020 that only about two-thirds of employers actually used E-Verify as needed over the years.
A law from 2011 already says that government workers have to ask for proof of identity or work permits when people apply for licenses like food handler certificates.
For decades, Republicans have used illegal immigration as a political problem. But new research from Pew shows that 80% of Americans, voters from both parties, think the federal government is doing a “bad job” with immigration.
The resolution is another one that Republicans may put on the 2024 ballot since Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, took office last year. To get on the ballot, the bill only needs to get support from a simple majority of lawmakers. This is possible across party lines because Republicans have a one-vote lead in both houses of Congress. It’s not necessary for Hobbs to sign.
Supporters of immigration said the plan was cruel and dangerous and that it would cause protests like the ones that happened after former Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 in 2010, which gave police more power to enforce immigration laws. The court was able to overturn a lot of the law, but Arizona police can still ask people they stop about their immigration status if they think the person is in the country illegally.
“The truth is that most of the people living here without papers have been doing so for more than 10 years on average.” An immigration rights group’s CEO and founder, Reyna Montoya, said, “They have to make a living.”
At a meeting about the resolution in the House Appropriations Committee after the news conference, people spoke out strongly against it.
Democratic Rep. Oscar De Los Santos, D-Laveen, said, “This makes it more likely for people who can’t work to do things that are illegal or dangerous to make ends meet.” “It flies in the face of a welcoming, safe, and loving society.”
He criticized Republicans for being hostile toward immigrants, which made the chair of the committee, Republican Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria, punish him.
Toma and other Republicans said the resolution was needed to keep illegal people from moving to Arizona, and they said it would also save the state money. Toma used numbers from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group, to show that the state spends about $2.3 billion a year on payments for people who live in the state illegally.
The motion passed the committee with a vote of 10 to 7. It will now be put to a vote by the whole House before going to the state Senate.
It wasn’t clear to Toma how much the whole thing would cost, and he wasn’t sure if the E-Verify system could be used for state licenses instead of hiring people. He insisted that the state had to do everything it could to cut back on the perks, like hiring people.
A FAIR website, referring to a study the group conducted in 2017, states that Arizona spends $2.4 billion on undocumented people, with over 54% of that devoted to K–12 costs. But the law says that the state’s public school system has to take kids in without checking their status. Other costs in the FAIR analysis may be impossible to get rid of, as well, like costs for immigration enforcement and emergency medical services.
