Oakland County workers gather to support Commissioner Runestad's Jobs Program
Runestad's Positions on Illegal Workers
PROTECT AMERICAN JOBS
First and foremost, all levels of government need to follow the rule of law. Secondly, we need to enforce the rule of law and ensure a level playing field for business and protect the rights of legal American workers.
Below are websites to more information about the necessity of E-Verify.
E-Verify Statistics
The voluntary federal program has seen a rapid growth in use this year, Department of Homeland Security records show. More than 1,000 employers are signing up each week on average, and employment checks are approaching 200,000 a week.
Halfway through this year 5.5 million worker checks have been made by employers through the E-Verify online service. In 2008, 6.6 million checks were made, twice the number in 2007.
"From a year ago, it's just tremendous" growth, said William Wright, spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers the program.
Crump and Jenna Hamilton, NAHB’s assistant vice president of legal affairs, say that builders should be prepared for ICE to step up its scrutiny of I-9s, the forms that builders require contractors to file validating the legal status of their workers. Chandler adds that the best way for employers to protect themselves against prosecution is to enroll in e-Verify, which allows companies to check their employees’ resident status against the Social Security database. As of last week, more than 120,000 employers representing 468,000 workplace locations were enrolled in e-Verify, says Chandler, with another 1,000 employers per week coming on board.
S. 2044—that sought to close tax loopholes for businesses that were classifying certain employees as independent contractors.
If that legislation had passed, it would have repealed the Revenue Act of 1978 by requiring employers to treat misclassified independent contractors as employees instead and also eliminating the defense of “industry practices” as justification for misclassifying workers as independent contractors.
E-Verify is an Internet-based screening system allowing prospective employers to quickly and cheaply determine a job applicant's legal status.
Currently, approximately 96.1 percent of qualified employees are cleared automatically by E-Verify, and 99.6 percent of all work-authorized employees are verified without receiving a tentative nonconfirmation or having to take any type of corrective action.
According to the 2007 independent Westat evaluation of E-Verify, “[m]ost employers found the Web Basic Pilot (E-Verify) to be an effective and reliable tool for employment verification” and 96 percent strongly disagreed that E-Verify was a burden.
Commissioner Runestad's Speech Given at the June 1, 2009 American Jobs Rally
Thank you all for coming out this morning! It is an exciting day to see this show of support for your fellow American legal workers and the rule of law!
Here in Michigan we have been in a single state-recession for a decade and now are entering a single-state depression. Why do I say a depression? Because GM is expected to reduce its white-collar work force by up to one-third, this will likely continue to escalate Michigan’s nation-leading 12.9 percent unemployment rate. And keep in mind this rate does not include those who have quit looking for work or were forced to accept part time work. That figure is 4-6% higher.
With ever larger GM layoffs, as well as the resultant reduction at automotive suppliers and other businesses, the forecasts are the jobless rate will increase to between 16 and 18 percent by later this year.
Economist David Littmann projects Michigan’s top rate could hit 20 percent as the GM bankruptcy slices through our economy. The real rate at that point would be around 25%. To give you some perspective, the national unemployment rate during the Great Depression, averaged 17.3 percent.
Now that you are aware of some of the pertinent statistics relating to understanding the beak unemployment prospects here in Michigan, you need to also understand the effect illegal employees have on our workforce and economy:
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a non-profit, non-partisan research organization, there are approximately 7.2 million undocumented workers in the United States and Michigan has an estimated 150,000 immigrants living within the state illegally.
The Detroit News reported that Michigan has lost nearly half a million residents to other states over the last 8 years looking for employment.
The Wall Street Journal reported more than $11 billion in wages last year earned by unauthorized foreign workers in the United States was sent back to their home countries and therefore was not spent to stimulate the United States economy. How much was removed from Oakland County?
Businesses that hire illegal workers undercut honest competitors, contribute to increased unemployment for U.S. citizens and legal aliens, and financially burden local communities with additional health and social services costs.
It is in the best interests for the security and economic well-being of Oakland County residents for the county government to be proactive in upholding federal immigration and employment laws with the companies that it contracts with.
So let's talk about this issue in a serious way. Even with a good economy the presence of illegals depresses wages. Especially the wages of these who are trying to get their first jobs or the less skilled or for unionized workers. Given the current situation we are contending with here in Oakland County it would is unconscionable not to work immediately to fix the situation. For the illegal’s who are trying to find work they are generally hard workers who are trying to make a better life for themselves or their families and are just taking advantage what they preserve as an open market. Everyone agrees that illegal immigrants cross our borders because they want to work here. If we can reduce the lure of illegal employment, we can reduce the pressure on our borders. They real solution has to begin with the Feds controlling the boarder and then enforcing the employment laws to ensure employers don’t hire and profit from illegal workers. Our average workers deserve the same protections against unfair/illegal competition that our doctors get. For such an employer enforced policy to work long term, there must be an easy way for companies to check the legal status of a new hire. And there is a way, E-Verify! E-Verify lets employers confirm a worker's information with the Social Security Administration database over the Internet.
What is E-Verify?
E-Verify is a free and simple to use Web-based system that electronically verifies the employment eligibility of newly hired employees. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services the federal E-Verify program is 99.6% accurate, instantaneous, free and is required in15 states.
E-Verify is a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services oversees the program.
Use of E-verify allows employers to check the legal status of their workers and has exploded in recent years.
E-Verify works by allowing participating employers to electronically compare employee information taken from the Form I-9 (the paper-based employee eligibility verification form used for all new hires) against more than 425 million records in SSA's database and more than 60 million records in DHS immigration databases. Results are returned in seconds.
How it works
1. An employer registers to use E-Verify through U.S. Citizenship and Information Services
2. After reading and signing a Memorandum of Understanding, the employer takes an online tutorial to use the Internet-based system.
3. The employer then enters information from a newly hired employee's I-9 form into E-Verify.
4. E-Verify checks the identifying information against the Social Security database and a number of Homeland Security databases.
5. If the employee is confirmed, he or she is authorized to work.
6. If the employee's information doesn't match, the employer notifies the person of the "tentative non-confirmation."
7. The employee has eight working days to contest the finding with the Social Security Administration and/or the Department of Homeland Security.
8. If the employee does not or cannot resolve the issue, he or she receives a "final non-confirmation," and the employer must terminate employment.
When an E-Verify employer hires a new worker, the employer gets on line and fills out a short electronic form. As soon as the employer hits “send,” the system checks to make sure that the worker’s name matches his Social Security Number. If the worker is not a U.S. citizen, the system also checks to make sure his work authorization is still valid and shows the employer the picture that should be on the DHS-issued identity card. For most workers, verification is instantaneous.
E-Verify is simple, free, and highly effective in preventing illegal work. It works, and that’s what the interests arrayed against E-Verify don’t like. Opponents of E-Verify have resorted to charges that just don’t hold up.
To debunk the myths of the opponents I will list their allegations and then reference the facts as presented by Westat Corporation.
Westat is an employee-owned corporation providing research services to agencies of the U.S. Government, as well as businesses, foundations, and state and local governments. They have been demonstrating independent technical and managerial research excellence since 1963, and is one of the foremost contract research organizations in the United States.
Allegation: The process is burdensome for employers.
Answer: According to the 2007 independent Westat evaluation of E-Verify, “most employers found (E-Verify) to be an effective and reliable tool for employment verification” and 96 percent strongly disagreed that E-Verify was a burden.
Allegation: The process takes to long:
Westat found that E-Verify cleared 96 percent of employees within 5 seconds.
Allegation: The opposition to E-Verify often claims that the program has a high error rate.
Westat’s research shows Less than one-half of 1 percent were not verified because of errors in the Social Security database. (Employers can't fire them while the mismatch is being contested.) The rest were illegal workers.
Advocates of open borders – both defenders of illegal immigration and cheap-labor businesses – have run a campaign to demonize E-Verify precisely because it works so well. The open boarder-advocates state that rather than staunching the flow of undocumented workers, the United States should simply legalize everyone. Their argument is that wages are being driven down because employers can exploit illegal workers. Make them legal, and companies would have to improve pay and working conditions for all.
Three problems I see immediately with this concept are #1) This approach rewards those who break our laws. #2) It makes chumps of those who have follow our rules and laws. #3) You can't get around basic labor economics. From heart surgeon to carpenter, every worker here is subject to the law of supply and demand. The more people there are chasing the same number of jobs, the less anyone has to pay you.
And finally, again, to keep in perspective, we in the United States are now accepting 2 million legal immigrants a year, more than the rest of the world combined. Those of us here today certainly don’t need to apologize for drawing the line at illegal immigration.
Thank you for taking our time today to make a difference for your self, your community, and your county.
