“USCISDemocrats and those centrist Republicans unwilling to get serious about stopping illegal immigration need to be made to explain why they are OK with this widespread form of ID theft, which is a felony under the federal Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998. That 20-year-old law carries with it penalties of up to 15 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.”

Daily Caller

MANDATING E-VERIFY NATIONWIDE WOULD BUILD AN ELECTRONIC WALL TO CURB ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

August 2, 1018
President Trump tweeted Sunday that he “would be willing to shut down government” at the end of September if Congress doesn’t get serious about border security.

In the tweet—and in a follow-up tweet Monday—the president renewed his call for faster funding of a border wall but curiously made no mention of another border security measure that arguably would be as effective as the wall at curbing illegal immigration.

That would be mandating the use by all employers of E-Verify, the federal database to confirm that their workers are in the country legally.

Trump called for the E-Verify mandate in a campaign stump speech two years ago in August 2016, but it since seems to have fallen down the memory hole.

If jobs are the magnet that attracts illegal immigrants to and across the southern border, it follows that to “demagnetize” illegal immigration will require eliminating, or at least dramatically reducing, the lure of employment here.

But in the reporting on the debate in Congress in late June on immigration-reform legislation, there was virtually no mention of E-Verify, which likely would do at least as much to curtail illegal border-crossing as Trump’s proposed “big, beautiful wall.”

(That’s not to suggest that the two are mutually exclusive. To the contrary, together they would be doubly effective.)

The tougher of the two immigration bills that Congress debated and voted on last month did include the requirement that all employers utilize the federal E-Verify database.

It went down to defeat 193-to-231 on June 21, however, with 41 centrist Republicans joining all 190 Democrats who voted in opposition.

That made it clear that neither open-borders liberals who crave more than anything else a “path to citizenship” for undocumented future Democratic voters nor the Main Street Partnership-style moderate Republicans who carry water for the Chamber of Cheap Labor are serious about addressing the problem of illegal immigration.

Coincidentally, that vote came just a day after federal immigration-enforcement personnel arrested 146 workers in a raid at a meatpacking plant in Salem, Ohio. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Fresh Mark might have knowingly hired illegal immigrants, many of whom were fraudulently using identifications of U.S. citizens.

Democrats and those centrist Republicans unwilling to get serious about stopping illegal immigration need to be made to explain why they are OK with this widespread form of ID theft, which is a felony under the federal Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998. That 20-year-old law carries with it penalties of up to 15 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000….More here