Require a check of workers’ citizenship

Absent the promised protection of secure borders and enthusiastic enforcement of our nation’s immigration and employment laws from our federal government, the Georgia General Assembly should continue to do what it can to make life uncomfortable for illegal employers and black market labor.

A very effective tool and one that has been implemented in other states would be the requirement that all employers in Georgia use the no cost federal data base called E-Verify, which verifies the eligibility to work in the United States for all newly hired employees.

At present, only public employers and their contractors are required to use this available tool.

Employing an illegal alien is a felony, and illegal employment is the root of our national illegal immigration crisis. The howls from the criminal employers will show their true colors when the threat of having to pay a living wage to legal labor is even mentioned as a possibility.

The fact that illegal immigration is considered by many to be a separate, unconnected issue from declining wages for low-skilled workers, taxes, education, the economy, health care, traffic congestion or the dilemma of providing water to a soaring population is sadly laughable to those who study the issue.

The United States is taking in more than a million legal immigrants each year, and more than another million illegal aliens. A large part of the solution to many of our problems is not difficult to see.

Memo to the Georgia Legislature: Let’s start using the readily available tools at our disposal to start shutting off the employment magnet that creates illegal immigration and watch as many of our other problems begin to shrink instead of grow.

D.A. KING, Marietta

King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society, a nonprofit coalition actively opposed to illegal immigration. On the Web: www.thedustininmansociety.org HERE