Enforcing the law is not bad public policy
A letter in the Sunday, April 6th edition concerning the the proposed law relating to illegal immigrants and their detention based on a judges reasonable belief the person is unlawfully present, asks the questions: “On what facts is the judge developing this “‘reasonable belief”? Is it the color of the person’s skin? Or, perhaps, is it the individual’s accent?” The answer to these questions is, the same facts as would apply to you if you were stopped for a suspected violation or involved in an accident and could not produce a license, insurance card, registration, or any other form of identification. You would be detained until your proper identity and legal status (wants, warrants, and legal status) could be confirmed.
The letter also stated, “So, that person would be guilty until he could prove himself innocent.” Ever received a traffic violation? You are also guilty until you can prove your innocence. If you are suspected of a crime, you too can be held until your guilt (or innocence) can be proven. You could be granted bail or not depending on whether the judge reasonably believes you are a flight risk. This is no different.
The original letter writer stated the bill represents poorly conceived public policy. This is incorrect. The bill represents specific instructions on how the State of Missouri will enforce existing law. Keep in mind the term illegal is used to describe these immigrants because they broke the laws of this country when they illegally crossed our border. This bill is needed and should be signed into law as soon as possible.
James R. Fischer
Warrenton
(8 votes, average: 3.5 out of 5)
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Employment Eligibility Verification Basic Pilot Program allows employers to check their employees’ and potential employees’ identification documents against federal databases online to ensure that the employee or applicant has legal status and is eligible for employment. The program is currently available in all 50 states, and is ready for use. The only problem with the program is that no one is using it, because it isn’t mandatory. Only about 1% of employers participate. By expanding the program and making it mandatory, employers would be virtually unable to “unknowingly” hire illegal workers, and would be subject to the fines and possible jail time already established by current immigration law.
Basic Pilot is the perfect way to attack illegal immigration at the choke point: if illegal immigrants can’t get jobs, they will be quite disinclined to come to America, or stay here. This eliminates the need to break out the armored trucks and take to the streets rounding up lettuce pickers like cattle and shuttling them over the border on the American dime – a cost we certainly can’t afford (though the addition of 10-20 million new workers into the Social Security beneficiary pool we can easily sustain).
Another key reason why Basic Pilot is such an important tool is another illegal immigration secret that nobody ever told you: not everyone in the country illegally is Pedro the Catholic lettuce picker from Mexico. About 40% of people in the country illegally never sneaked across a border. They came on legal temporary visas and then simply overstayed them.
That’s easy to do in the U.S., because we have absolutely no systems in place to keep track of immigrants once they’re here. We know when they come in, but leaving is left basically to the honor system. You could build a 50-foot tall fence across the entire southern and northern borders, but it can’t keep out the people who enter legally. However, the Basic Pilot Program can prevent them from being illegally employed and throw up red flags with law enforcement when they try to get jobs.