There was an interesting editorial in the Miami Herald this weekend. It has a lot of truth in it, but those readers that oppose immigration will not see it. Nonetheless, it clearly explains why the country needs immigrants and why it should value them, instead of demonizing us.
The Miami Herald Editorial Board castigated Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ intent to bring back E-Verify to Florida.
The editorial states “E-Verify is the very bad idea that just won’t die.”
The editorial continues; “if the Florida Legislature approves the misguided initiative, it will be lethal to the state’s business community, its agriculture, hospitality and construction industries and the employees they need to hire to keep Florida’s economic engine.”
There, in that one sentence, lies the unpleasant fact that Donald Trump and cohorts refuse to accept.
Immigrants keep America’s economy humming along.
Even Donald Trump’s own resorts have relied on undocumented workers and immigrants to keep the resorts humming along.
E-Verify is a federal government system that allows employers to verify their workers’ authority to work in the country. The system was launched in 1996 and has yet to be fully implemented across the country. Very few states currently use the system. It seems like a simple solution to a problem – have all employees checked for the right to work – but not many want to use it. Why?
Many states, including Florida at the moment, do not mandate the scheme for checking workers before being hired.
The stated reasons are the system is flawed, unreliable and is unable to provide a conclusive answer to the question of whether a worker is eligible to work.
Those are reasons, but the reality is that America’s economy cannot function without undocumented immigrant workers. That is the fundamental reality.
Some readers will question this reality, but the fact prove otherwise. For example, the recent ICE raids in Mississippi poultry plants prove this.
Mississippi is one of the few states that mandate E-Verify. Yet, the poultry plants continue to rely on undocumented workers for years. Even more poignant is that although almost 700 undocumented workers were detained, not one company official was detained nor charged.
Why?
Because it is all a show.
The Mississippi worker raids were designed to pacify Donald Trump’s hatred of immigrants. Nothing more, nothing less. It was a spectacle to show that the government is serious about deporting undocumented immigrants. The reason company officials are yet to be charged is because of the “wink, wink” nature of the America’s immigration system that knows undocumented immigrants are essential to its economy but a “show” must be occasionally conducted to pretend that the government is working to secure its borders.
This is especially true under Donald Trump.
The Miami Editorial board argued in its editorial that “E-Verify is really all about, targeting undocumented immigrants; the ones who do the jobs so many native-born Americans will not.”
Those that argue that Miami is mostly Cuban immigrants that want to see open borders should remember that Cubans in the United States are unlikely supporters of México or Mexicans because of Mexico’s affinity to the Cuban regime under previous administrations. Cubans in the U.S. normally support Republican candidates because the Republicans have traditionally opposed the Castro brothers.
This is not about immigrants – legal or otherwise – supporting each other.
It is about the reality that America’s economy depends on immigrant labor doing the work U.S. workers won’t do.
That is the fundamental reality that immigrant bashers refuse to accept.
