Linda Sanchez’ Easy Dismissal Of E-Verify and H.R. 4088
My beloved wife remains hopeful that our nation’s political representatives can be influenced to do what is right, and one of the ways she expresses this belief is by sending letters to her state and federal representatives in the attempt to elicit their support for legislation that would help to mitigate some of the damage being done to our country by the multitude of illegal aliens. Personally, I am a tad bit more pessimistic about our representative’s willingness to listen to their constituents and operate under the belief that 99.999% of the politicians in this country are irredeemably corrupt and will do nothing that does not benefit them directly regardless of what their constituents demand. My wife is a very kind, compassionate and caring human being holding out for peaceful and reasonable solutions to serious problems, and I respect that even though I do no believe that it is realistic. I remain hopeful that her and people very much like her are right in their beliefs and that I am wrong, however, the responses she gets from her communications to these individuals have, to date, been less than promising. The example given below illustrates my point with exacting precision. This response was to a letter written to Linda T. Sanchez requesting her support for H.R. 4088, the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act of 2007.
Linda T. Sanchez
39th District, California
Congress of the United States
House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
December 9, 2008
Dear Mary:
Thank you for sharing your support for H.R. 4088, the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act of 2007. I enjoy corresponding with my constituents.
As you may know, H.R. 4088 was introduced by Congressman Heath Shuler on November 6, 2007. It was referred to the Committees on Homeland Security, Judiciary, Ways and Means, Education and Labor, Oversight and Government Reform, Armed Services, Agriculture, and Natural Resources. To date, no further legislative action has been taken.
Our current immigration laws are not working. As a result, some individuals from other countries, desperate for a better life in the U.S., take great risks to enter our country without proper documentation. However, the SAVE Act is not the answer.
I support giving workers organizing rights, livable wages, and benefits through earned legalization. The use of undocumented workers hurts American workers, who may lose job opportunities when employers refuse to pay living wages or provide good benefits. Current policy also hurts undocumented workers because unscrupulous employers take advantage of undocumented workers by paying them low wages and providing no benefits.
Unfortunately, the SAVE Act seeks to expand the E-Verify system (formerly known as the Basic Pilot program), which has been plagued by a multitude of problems since its inception in 1997. For example, employers who misuse the program to discriminate against workers, and an inability to recognize counterfeit, borrowed, or stolen documents. Additionally, the notification system included in the SAVE Act does not address the problem of relying on government databases that have unacceptably high error rates. I do not believe that expanding a system that has proven to be a failure is the best solution to a growing problem.
In conjunction with an effective policy to ensure that we have a sufficient labor supply to meet our economy’s needs, we must create a system for employers to accurately determine if a person has legal work status. If employers are given the proper tools and still knowingly employ undocumented workers, they should be held accountable.
I respect your different point of view on this very controversial subject. While we may disagree on this issue, I am confident that there are many other areas where we agree. Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns. It is my pleasure to represent you in the U.S. House of Representatives. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Sincerely
Linda T. Sanchez
Member of Congress
Linda T. Sanchez has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003, representing the 39th District of California. She was born in Orange, California and grew up with six siblings (including fellow Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez), and she was raised by Mexican immigrant parents in Anaheim, California. Unlike her sister, Loretta, who began her political career as a liberal Republican, Linda Sanchez has always been a Democrat and is considered far more liberal than her sister.
During the 2008 campaign finance cycle, the lists of top 20 industrial contributors to her campaign, Political Action committees and individuals indicate that Linda T. Sanchez is heavily influenced by the leaders of organized labor who view illegal aliens as a means to expand their both their membership and the amount of union dues they collect every month. Inasmuch as Linda T. Sanchez is primarily a lackluster, Democratic political hack who elicits little, if any excitement among even her predominantly Hispanic constituents she is almost entirely dependent on her ability to sell the potential accomplishments of her office in exchange for the labor union money contributed to her. This is not to say that she is doing anything illegal. but the difference between legality and what is ethical is enormous and it is obvious that our members of congress are sometimes easily confused by the difference.
The 39th Congressional District in California is made up of South Gate, Lynwood, Paramount, Lakewood, Cerritos, La Mirada and part of Whittier, a large percentage of her legal constituents are Hispanic and an equally large percentage of the individuals living in this district are, in fact, illegal aliens. Despite most reliable polls indicating that Hispanic-American citizens and legal immigrants favor strong immigration enforcement, Linda T. Sanchez continues to oppose virtually every legislative attempt to strengthen those laws. She uses her own Hispanic ethnicity as some sort of validation that she speaks for her Hispanic constituents in the 39th District when, in reality, she is merely speaking for the labor unions who want to take advantage of the illegal aliens by organizing them so they can tap their wages for dues money. The Hispanic-Americans and legal immigrants of the 39th Congressional District are just about as fed up with illegal aliens as the rest of the country, possibly even more so. Their neighborhoods are hit the hardest with criminal street gangs, graffiti, drive-by shootings, uninsured drunk drivers, identity theft and all of the other crimes associated with large populations of illegal aliens. Their children are the kids most endangered by illegal aliens gang bangers indiscriminately shooting up neighborhoods, their houses are the ones getting broken into, their cars are the ones that are most stolen and their neighborhoods are the ones getting trashed up with graffiti. Many of them were either born here legally or patiently waited their turn to immigrate to this country in the proper manner, and the idea that their former countrymen would come here illegally and demand the same rights and benefits that they worked so hard to establish for themselves and their families is an insult to everything they have struggled to accomplish. Unfortunately, the Hispanic-Americans, naturalized citizens and legal immigrants of the 39th Congressional District have not yet figured out that Linda T. Sanchez is one of the primary reasons why their neighborhoods continue to be the playgrounds of violent street gangs and predatory illegal aliens because she is not representing the best interests of her actual constituents as much as she is representing the agenda laid out for her by the labor unions who could care less about the crime rate in the 39th District or it’s affect on the people who live there.
Contrary to what Linda Sanchez says about the E-Verify system, it is a tool that works and when it comes to immigration enforcement, there are not enough tools in the tool box to get the job done largely in part to obstructionist liberals representing the demands of labor union leaders over the demands of their constituents. The E-Verify system has had problems. Social Security Administration staffers routinely commit errors while entering data and those errors could adversely affect someone looking for employment, however, the number of errors made, in comparison to the amount of data input into the system, are relatively few, and over time, those errors can be corrected. If the Social Security Administration staffers can’t efficiently and correctly input the data, that’s no reason to get rid of E-Verify, but it is a good reason to reconsider those staffer’s employment status. Essentially, the E-Verify system is an effective tool for immigration enforcement and it will become more efficient and effective as time goes on. It cannot become more efficient and effective if it is scrapped and replaced by something else, and there is no guarantee that such a replacement would be error free, more efficient or more effective. By replacing the E-Verify system we would essentially be starting over from scratch, and there is no real justification for doing so when what we have now can be fixed so that it works the way we want it is supposed to work. Furthermore, while the labor union’s bought and paid for politicians are quick to point out the flaws in the E-Verify system, none of them have proposed a better system or shown us how the job could be done better. Crescent wrenches are a lot more effective than the rust-coated old forged steel monkey wrenches but if what you got is an empty wallet, a monkey wrench and a leaky pipe flange then you’re going to use that monkey wrench no matter how old and ugly it is because it works. Throwing out a functional tool when there is nothing to replace it is only an option considered by idiots.
Our current immigration laws would work fine if they were enforced as they were meant to be enforced. The primary critics of our current immigration laws are those who would stand to profit by changing them, such as the companies looking for a cheap source of labor and labor unions looking for more members to swindle out of dues and pension money. The individuals illegally entering our nation from other countries might be desperate for a better life in the U.S. but they are also criminals that have violated our immigration laws and they need to be sent back to their own countries because we cannot pick and choose which laws we will obey and which to ignore if our legal system is to have any credibility. Fortunately, quite a few Americans already understand this fundamental fact. All we have to do to really show some progress around here is to convince the elected representatives like Linda T. Sanchez to do our bidding instead of the labor union’s bidding.
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