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SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
May 11, 2008
Employers say migration law burden unfairly placed
McALLEN — Employers have become the nation's whipping boy on the
immigration front at the peril of the national economy, and a group of
them gathered here Friday agreed they needed to press politically for
that to stop.
“We need to redouble our efforts. The employers need to be in the game,”
Bill Hammond, head of the Texas Association of Business, said of the
immigration debate in Washington. “Restaurants are not being built,
hotels are not being built, crops are not being planted — all for a lack
of workers.”
The summit sponsored by Texas Employers for Immigration Reform, or TEIR,
barely filled half of a meeting room in this city's cavernous new
convention center, but most of the attendees carry influence.
Among them were a bank executive, human resources head for one of the
Rio Grande Valley's largest employers and McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez,
all of whom said they are for allowing undocumented workers legalization
to be able to stay in the United States to work.
But the popular cry nationally has largely been for sending unauthorized
immigrants home, keeping them out and cracking down on employers whose
jobs are incentives for crossing the border.
Employers are watching as states enact laws they say could put them out
of business for document transgressions they might not be able to
control.
A Burger King franchise owner in Arizona testified in Congress recently
that a workforce enforcement rule there could put him out of business
for two bad hires out of 900 — even though that meant a compliance rate
above 99 percent.
Federally, the “no match” rule would force employers to fire workers who
don't quickly remedy the fact that their Social Security numbers and
names don't match.
In 2005, employers got “no match” letters on 7.3 million employees,
which Hammond said was often due to simple errors such as misspelled
names, marriage or confusion caused by use of multiple surnames.
“Employers should not be put in a position to have to be verifying the
validity of certain documents,” Hammond said.
Of the nation's 1.6 million farm workers, up to 70 percent may be
illegal, creating a crisis should they be sent home.
“From an agricultural perspective, this is still the No. 1 issue,” said
former U.S. Rep. Charles Stenholm, a Democrat. “This is one that needs
to be worked out in an impartial, nonpartisan way.”
Tamar Jacoby, president of Immigration Works USA, an umbrella agency for
groups like TEIR, said that Texans had the same concerns as business
people in other states. She said there were many in Congress who
understood the nation's dependence on immigrant labor but who
politically could not support legalization.
“This really is the front line of the battle in Washington right now,”
she said. “Representatives are saying, ‘I get it, but I can't vote for
it unless I hear some people in my district telling me to vote that
way.'”
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