America's Voice Blog

Posted 02/02/12 at 10:09am By Mahwish Khan

In Kobach’s Home State, Business Leaders Want to Allow Undocumented Immigrants to Have Jobs

welcome to kansasKris Kobach authored Arizona's SB 1070 and Alabama's HB 56. He also confirmed to the AP earlier that he's "serving as an unpaid adviser on immigration issues" to Republican Mitt "I believe in self-deportation" Romney. Kobach's mission is to inflict so much hardship on immigrants that they leave the U.S, a process called "attrition through enforcement." While Kobach his wreaking havoc on the immigrant families and the economies of other states, the Agriculture Secretary wants to create a program to allow undocumented immigrants to work:

Facing pressure from large dairies and feedlots desperate for workers, Kansas Agriculture Secretary Dale Rodman is seeking a federal waiver that would allow companies to hire illegal immigrants.

Rodman has met several times with officials at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security about launching a pilot program that would place employers and illegal immigrants in a special state-organized network. The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that the goal is to create a legal, straightforward manner of organizing existing immigrant labor.

So far, Homeland Security has neither approved nor rejected the idea. “I need a waiver,” Rodman said. “It would be good for Kansas agriculture.”

Rodman's proposal is supported by the GOP-leaning business community:

The coalition pushing the new program includes agriculture groups with memberships that traditionally lean toward the GOP, as well as the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, another stalwart supporter of conservative Republicans.

So the people who work in agriculture and run businesses need undocumented immigrants to fill jobs. We'll see if Kobach will do to the Kansas economy what he's done to Alabama's -- $11 billion and counting. (Despite what Kobach thinks.)

Posted 01/23/12 at 06:26pm By Van Le

Anti-Immigrant Laws in Alabama, Georgia Lead to Labor Shortages, Farmer Uncertainty About Crops

georgia onions“This is a jobs bill,” they said.  “This is a jobs-creation bill for Americans,” they said.

Such were the arguments that Alabama Senator Scott Beason (R) and Rep. Micky Hammon (R) made last year before passing their notoriously anti-immigrant state law, HB 56.

“Opponents of the law like to say that Alabamians won’t work the same jobs illegal immigrants are working,” said another supporter, Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh.  “That’s simply not true.”

As it turns out: it was true.  Some farmers in Alabama and Georgia (which has a local anti-immigrant law of its own) are now facing such dire labor shortages as a result of these laws that they have begun changing their plans for planting and harvesting crops.  From the Washington Post this weekend:

Some farmers said they might reduce the number of acres they plant or shift to less labor-intensive crops, while others are bracing for higher labor prices and have turned to new recruiting tools to attract workers.

Georgia and Alabama have approved laws that have tough enforcement provisions that farmers say are scaring migrant workers away from the states.

Since the laws were approved last year, farmers in both states have reported labor shortages because migrant workers aren’t showing up and they say they can’t find other workers to fill the jobs.

Farmers and state officials have said that some produce was left to rot in the field last year because there weren’t enough workers to help with the harvest.

Farmers have claimed not enough U.S. citizens want the jobs, but some said the issue is actually that producers won’t offer a high enough wage to attract legal workers.

Brett Hall, Alabama’s deputy agriculture commissioner, said nurseries across south Alabama are trying to find workers to fill about 2,000 jobs ahead of the spring growing season. Many nursery growers are staffing job fairs in hopes of attracting employees, he said.

Other growers aren’t ordering seeds or new equipment because they anticipate a labor shortage, he said.

“Before this law, migrant workers would just show up. They knew when they were needed,” Hall said. “That’s not happening anymore.”

“Garsh, who could have predicted this?” snarked Joe Jervis at joe.my.god.

Who, indeed?  It’s not as if there have been countless articles and commentaries that have been warning legislators for months about what would happen if a state tried to evict a hardworking population that did the jobs the rest of its residents didn’t want to.

It’s not as if there haven’t been analyses of how many workers these farms are short (11,000 in Georgia) or how much money these laws have cost (“millions” in unharvested and rotting crops).

It’s not as if farmers have been begging legislators to repeal the law in order to give them a chance to preserve their livelihood.  Remember this episode?

But farmers’ pleas fell on deaf ears when they spoke recently to the bill’s sponsor, Alabama state Sen. Scott Beason (R). Beason stood firmly behind the law, arguing that it would help free up jobs for Alabamians in a state suffering from high unemployment. The farmers were quick to tell him that immigrants are the only ones willing to do this kind of back-breaking field labor. One farmer even challenged Beason to try the work himself if he was so confident immigrants could be easily replaced:

Tomato farmer Brian Cash said the migrant workers who would normally be on Chandler Mountain have gone to other states with less restrictive laws.

After talking with farmers at the tomato shed, Beason visited the Smith family’s farm. Leroy Smith, Chad Smith’s father, challenged the senator to pick a bucket full of tomatoes and experience the labor-intensive work.

Beason declined but promised to see what could be done to help farmers while still trying to keep illegal immigrants out of Alabama.

Smith threw down the bucket he offered Beason and said, “There, I figured it would be like that.”

The new legislative session in Alabama begins February 7.  You can be sure we'll be there to renew the fight against HB 56, forcing legislators to reap what they've sown.

Posted 11/30/11 at 09:57am By Mahwish Khan

Anti-Immigrant Legislation Will Ruin America’s Acricultural Economy

Agriculture workersThe AP reports that the agriculture industry is worried about enforcement measures like E-Verify, a flawed tool which would evaluate whether or not an employee is legal to work in the United States:

A plan to require all American businesses to run their employees through E-Verify, a program that confirms each is legally entitled to work in the U.S., could wreak havoc on an industry where 80 percent of the field workers are illegal immigrants. So could the increased paperwork audits already under way by the Obama administration.

But E-Verify is a system that is really faulty. It has a failure rate of over 50%, and has been known to cause severe problems for those who are eligible to work in the United States, often identifying authorized workers as unauthorized.

The effect that E-Verify will have on the agricultural economy is obvious to pretty much everyone but the "Three Amigos" – Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. Elton Gallegly, and Rep. Steve King – who head up the Immigration Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, and are pushing for legislation that would make E-Verify mandatory for all businesses. Here’s more from the AP story on the impact to the agriculture industry specifically:

Vilsak and the American Farm Bureau Federation president, Bob Stallman, said in a recent conference call with reporters that the best and likely only hope to stave off an economic catastrophe for American farmers and consumers is comprehensive overhaul of immigration policy. Vilsak said the industry is worth about $5 billion to $9 billion a year.

"We need to address the agriculture labor supply," Stallman said. "This situation will affect the future of America's farmers and ranchers."

Contributing to the article were Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA); Arturo S. Rodriguez, president of United Farm Workers; Manuel Cunha, president of Nisei Farmers League; Shawn Coburn, a politically active farmer; Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association; Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C, who are all in opinion that E-Verify could create a crisis in agriculture.

Still doubtful? Ask farmers in Alabama and Georgia, who are now struggling to find farm labor to save their businesses. With their respective new anti-immigrant laws in place, farmers have been pleading with state legislators to repeal the law – for good reason. According to the Tennessean, economists in the two states estimate Georgia’s and Alabama’s economies lost at least $115 million as a result of their anti-immigrant law:

Georgia economists estimate that their state lost $75 million from its $578 million agriculture industry as berries, bell peppers, squash, cucumbers, watermelons and the state’s famed Vidalia onions were left to rot.

Alabama’s initial estimate is $40 million lost, and Sam Addy, an economist at the University of Alabama, said that figure likely understates the damage.

The report on the economic damage to Georgia and Alabama comes from Tennessee, where legislators are considering passing similar legislation. Those in the agriculture industry are worried (rightly so) that such plans will cause a labor shortage:

“If, theoretically, you did get rid of all the Mexicans, you’d be hungry in a week,” Marks, a Tennessean tobacco farmer, said. “All your vegetables had a Mexican hand on it. All your fruit, and three-quarters of your meat.”

 Read both the AP article and Tennessean.com for more on the harmful effects of anti-immigrant legislation on the economy.

 

Posted 11/18/11 at 11:12am By Mahwish Khan

As Economic Fallout From HB 56 Mounts, Calls Grow to Repeal Alabama’s Anti-immigrant Law

The American Dream Is OverEarlier this week, Mooncat (Sherry) at Left in Alabama reported on the Economic Fallout from Beason-Hammon Immigration Law:

Now the economic fallout from Beason-Hammon is hitting the fan.

Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, which announced earlier this year its plans to build a $100 million plant in Thomasville, "is having second thoughts" about Alabama in light of the controversial law, according to David Bronner, chairman and chief executive of the Retirement Systems of Alabama. 

"They’re not happy," said Bronner, citing conversations with Golden Dragon executives. "They have expressed their concerns to me on numerous occasions."

...  Bronner, who oversees the state’s $29 billion public pension fund, first voiced his concernsabout the immigration law in an interview with the Birmingham News, saying it had caused the Spanish owners of BBVA Compass to cancel plans for an $80 million bank tower in Birmingham.               

That's some serious fallout, especially in these harsh economic times. This is just one of the many consequences from HB 56. Remember, this law is doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing according to State Senator Scott Beason, Congressman Mo Brooks, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions and anti-immigrant leader Mark Krikorian.

No wonder there are growing calls, even from some GOP Senators, to change HB 56.  The Anniston Star says that Alabama should just get rid of it altogether:

While politicians talk jobs, jobs, jobs, the state’s economy will contract by nearly $40 million if only 10,000 undocumented workers leave because of the bill. How will changes now help Alabama recover that revenue? (Don’t say unemployed Alabamians will take these jobs, because they won’t, as the latest edition of Bloomberg Businessweek makes clear.)

How will these changes help farmers whose crops were not harvested because there was no labor, or help the family that has to pay more at the grocery?

And will these changes assure China’s Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group that Alabama is not a hostile environment and that it should go ahead with the $100 million plant for south Alabama? Rival states that hope to lure the industry are using this illegal-immigration law to their advantage. Will these changes undermine that strategy?

Unfortunately, what Dial supports will not be enough. Making the law less of a burden on Alabamians can’t make up for the damage done to the state’s economy and reputation. The best thing the GOP can do is admit it was a bad idea, apologize for problems the law caused and repeal it. Anything less will do little to undo the real damage.

Posted 11/16/11 at 03:39pm By Pili Tobar

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam Warns Against Anti-Immigration Policies

florida orangesYesterday, former Republican congressman and current Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam criticized the harsh anti-immigration laws passed in neighboring states Alabama and Georgia, pointing out that the laws are already having real economic consequences and arguing that Florida show not follow this path. 

Speaking at a citrus industry conference, Putnam said, “Thank God for Georgia and Alabama because they’ve given us examples of real-world consequences of these mistaken policies.”  Putnam also said in regards to a potential enforcement-only immigration law in Florida, “There’s just no good news here…The best news would be if nothing happens…Because of the work done last year, I think this issue is taking a back seat in the Legislature, and I do not anticipate it taking such a large role next year.”  According to The Ledger, Putnam also noted that the arguments that alternatives such as unemployed U.S. workers or prison labor will make up for the loss of immigrant harvest workers has not come to pass in Alabama and Georgia.

Business owners in Alabama and Georgia are facing real-world consequences because of their states’ anti-immigration laws, and politicians need to pay attention.  As Commissioner Putnam points out, these laws are devastating key industries like agriculture and restaurants.  Florida lawmakers would be wise to learn from their neighbors.  Instead of passing another state immigration law, they should push the federal government to enact a real immigration solution.

Consider the following consequences being felt today in Georgia and Alabama:

New Estimates of Financial Toll & Damage to Businesses in Alabama: A report released by the Center for American Progress this week highlights the economic damage Alabama's law is wreaking on the state, assessing the financial hit to the state to be hundreds of millions of dollars lost in tax and farm revenue.  According to Alabama farmer, Chad Smith, he's lost $300,000 in revenue "because of labor shortages in the wake of HB 56."  Additionally, the law is tying up businesses with burdensome and costly new requirements.  The Birmingham News reports that:

Larry Dixon, the executive director of the Alabama State Board of Medical Examiners, said the board is working to comply with the law, but it will create a great deal of additional work.  It may also hamper the board's ability to renew licenses online, which now accounts for 75 percent to 80 percent of renewals, because it doesn't currently have a way to verify documents electronically.

Continued Toll on Agriculture and Restaurant Industry in Georgia: Representatives from two of the industries most devastated by Georgia’s immigration law testified at a Georgia State Senate hearing yesterday about the damage to their bottom lines.  Karen Bremer, executive director of the 16,000 restaurant strong Georgia Restaurant Association, stated that “People applying for jobs just aren’t qualified.”  As the Florida Times-Union noted, 22% of Georgia restaurants said applications for available jobs were down and “many restaurant owners were closing off part of their dining rooms or taking items off their menus” as a result of the labor shortage.  Meanwhile, the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association also testified against the law.  According to a study from the University of Georgia on behalf of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association, Georgia farmers had 11,000 jobs that went unfilled during the summer harvest, costing them $150 million.  Meanwhile, Paul Bridges, the mayor of Uvalda, Georgia, noted that the law is “destroying Georgia’s economy” and pointed out how as a result of the immigrant labor shortage, farmers in his area were switching to crops that can be harvested by machine, despite those crops bringing in less money.

Republican State Senators Finally Admit the Alabama Law Isn’t Working as Promised: Leading Alabama Republicans in the state Senate are finally admitting that the law is having some detrimental effects and needs adjusting.  Republican State Senator Gerald Dial said of proposed changes to the law, “It's just common sense. Let's step up and say we've made some mistakes.  It doesn't weaken the bill."  Dial also said, according to the Birmingham News, that “he doesn't believe the immigration law would have passed if senators had had more time to fully understand its ramifications.”  Additionally, Republican State Senator Jabo Waggoner, the new chair of the Senate Rules Committee after colleagues removed immigration law architect Senator Scott Beason from the chairmanship, said of the professional licensing provision in the bill, "This would be a very cumbersome requirement…I think that is one of the unintended consequences.  We are looking at some changes and that will need to be one of them."  Senator Waggoner also said that he has been hearing from many Alabama businesses having difficulty finding skilled workers and said, “People that are in the masonry business, you can't just hire an unemployed person and tell him to go lay bricks.”  The Birmingham News also characterizes Senator Waggoner as stating that, “The aim of the bill – to put Alabamians to work in positions that had been occupied by undocumented workers – was laudable, but not practical in all instances.”

According to Lynn Tramonte, our Deputy Director:

The experiences of farmers and other business owners in Alabama and Georgia should be a wake-up call to Republicans in Washington, and a warning to leaders in other states.  State-based crackdowns are not the solution; common sense, federal immigration reform is.

For more resources on Alabama, view:

The 10 Numbers You Need to Know About Alabama's Anti-Immigrant Law

(Center for American Progress)

Ten Things to Know About Alabama’s New Immigration Law

(America’s Voice Education Fund)

Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice

Posted 11/15/11 at 10:44am By Mahwish Khan

NBC’s Rock Center on the “Huge Controversy” in Alabama Caused by HB 56

Last night, on NBC's "Rock Center With Brian Williams," reporter Kate Snow did a segment on what Williams called the "huge controversy" in Alabama caused by the passage of HB 56. 

Snow's report showed the dire impacts of HB 56 on Alabama's Latino families and the state's farmers.

In his national interview, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley defended the law from criticisms from farmers. Bentley told Snow that he doesn't want to be "the face of an anti-immigrant sentiment," though it might be a little too late for that. FYI: He also wanted us to know that he's not a racist. 

This is definitely worth watching. 

Posted 11/04/11 at 10:47am By Mahwish Khan

Washington Post: Farmers in Alabama Are In Revolt Against the State’s Over-The-Top Immigration Law

Agriculture workersA scathing editorial, How Alabama’s immigration law is crippling its farms, in today's Washington Post blasts Alabama's new anti-immigrant law - and the failure of Congress to find a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. 

First, Alabama:

FARMERS IN ALABAMA are in revolt against the state’s over-the-top immigration law, which is designed to hound illegal immigrants so that they move elsewhere. As it happens, a substantial portion of farm workers there, as in other states, are undocumented. In the farmers’ view, the law is depriving them of steady, experienced labor — and threatening to deal a lethal blow to crops throughout the state.

The uproar has exposed political fault lines within the Republican Party, whose vows of support for business have run headlong into its crusade to drive away illegal immigrants, on whom agribusiness relies. It’s also laying bare the nation’s hypocrisy over unskilled immigrants, whose legal entry into the country is blocked in most cases even though their labor remains much in demand.

The editorial also addresses the reality that anti-immigrant lawmakers choose to ignore:

Of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country, some 7 million are in the job force. The idea that they can be deported or replaced en masse withjobless U.S. workers is far-fetched. That’s the message that Alabama farmers have been giving their elected leaders, so far to little avail.

Alabama lawmakers insist that, by driving undocumented workers out, they will open jobs for Americans; the unemployment rate in the state is nearly 10 percent. But farmers say that jobless U.S. workers, mostly inexperienced in field work and concentrated in and around cities, are ill-suited and mostly unwilling to do the back-breaking, poorly paid work required to plant and harvest tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and other crops. Farmers also say that, if they were to raise wages to make the jobs more attractive, as advocates for the new law suggest, crop prices would soar, making Alabama produce uncompetitive.

And this is a national issue that Congress refuses to address:

Some lawmakers, including Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), are suggesting the creation of a guest-worker program to recruit sufficient numbers of farm hands and other unskilled workers. But the workers required are already in the United States. Congress and the federal government have failed to establish an adequate supply of visas for the immigrant labor drawn here by the prospect of jobs. The right thing to do is to fix the problem by enabling those workers to legalize their status and put them on a path to citizenship.

That is the right thing to do. But we aren't expecting Rep. Lamar Smith to do anything about it. His goal is mass deportation, which would wreak the kind of havoc Alabama is experiencing on the entire country.

Posted 10/27/11 at 03:45pm By Van Le

“I Told You So,” Colbert Says to Alabama Immigration Law

The Alabama immigration law took a beating last night from no less an authority than Stephen Colbert, the show's host who famously spent a day laboring on a farm in upstate New York last year, then testified before Congress about his experience.

“It is really, really hard,” he told Congress at the time.  “’When you’re picking beans, you have to spend all day bending over.  It turns out—and I did not know this—most soil is at the ground level…This brief experience gave me some small understanding why so few Americans are clamoring to begin an exciting career as seasonal migrant fieldworker.”

You can watch the Colbert segment below:

Colbert’s testimony lifting up the hard work of laborers and lampooning those who believe that immigrants contribute nothing to the economy was ill-received by some who thought he showed disrespect for Congress’ decorum.  But Colbert got the last laugh yesterday, when he highlighted the current labor shortage in Alabama and Georgia following immigration crackdowns that have driven out many immigrant farmworkers.

“I TOLD YOU SO!” Colbert said on a giant-drop down banner, skewering the idea—promoted by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), among others—that unemployed white Americans would step in to take the farmworker jobs if only the immigrants could be made to leave.  In reality, so few Americans have expressed any desire for these farm jobs, and so many farmers have been watching their unpicked crops rot, that plans have had to be put in place to truck prison inmates out to the fields.  And even then, the inmates quickly quit.

“Turns out,” Colbert said in last night’s segment, “Americans who’ve chosen a life of crime don’t have quite the same work ethic as Guatemalans who’ve walked through 500 miles of desert to feed their children.”

Posted 10/27/11 at 01:30pm By Mahwish Khan

Wall Street Journal & New York Times Criticize Lamar Smith And His Not-So-All-American “Jobs Plan”

Lamar Smith No JobsThe Wall Street Journal makes an excellent point about immigration today.

Yesterday, before Janet Napolitano was to face a number of bullying Republicans at an Oversight Hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wrote an op-ed in Politico calling Obama’s record deportation numbers “a trick.”

He wrote, “Fourteen million Americans are now looking for work. Meanwhile, 7 million illegal immigrants have jobs in the U.S. We could free up millions of those jobs for citizens and legal immigrants if we simply enforced our immigration laws.” 

“What kind of jobs would those be?,” asked the Wall Street Journal. 

According to federal labor statistics, carpet mills, garment cutting and sewing, landcaping, car washes, and laundries are among the sectors most dominated by Hispanic workers (the numbers don’t break out documented versus undocumented workers). What kind of jobs wouldn’t they be? Professional careers such as management, law, architecture and the like: Among foreign-born workers, Hispanics have the lowest participation rates in professional sectors.

Word. Sadly, Rep. Lamar Smith's motivations are not about jobs. His “solution” to the immigration problem is to enact legislation that makes it impossible for undocumented immigrants to live and work here. His plan entails mass-deporting immigrants back to Mexico (or wherever), not because he's overly concerned about "jobs" for American citizens.  A strong statement, but not unfounded. Here’s some more proof of how much Lamar Smith does not care about American jobs – from the New York Times:

Mr. Smith, a Texas Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has a bill to require every employer in the country to use E-Verify, the federal hiring database, and fire the workers it flags as unauthorized.

He says it will give American jobs back to Americans. But it has angered small-business owners, who know a job-killing regulation when they see one. And it has enraged the farm industry, where more than half of the work force is undocumented. Thus the need for Mr. Smith’s second bill, the American Specialty Agriculture Act.

A well-designed agricultural guest worker program is not a bad idea. Even when unemployment is above 9 percent, Americans don’t want to stoop in the fields anymore.

But this is an awful guest worker bill. It would create a system that is far worse than the current cumbersome guest worker program. It would let growers pay even lower wages and weaken the rules on providing workers with housing and reimbursing their travel expenses. Growers would get a break on having to certify that they tried to hire Americans first. Oversight would shift from the Labor Department, with its pesky insistence on wage-and-hour protections, to the Department of Agriculture, which has never run a program like this before.

The growers’ rebellion against E-Verify, and Mr. Smith’s contortions to buy them off, is further proof that the country cannot live without immigrant labor — no matter what the nativists may claim. That is why, even as Congress has abdicated its duty to fix immigration and left the states to run amok on enforcement, there is still an abundance of visa-related bills on Capitol Hill...

There’s one group that badly needs and deserves visas that no one seems to want to go to bat for. They are the 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already living here and helping make things work. If they had a deal — pay fines, learn English, get to the back of the immigration line and, meanwhile, get back to work — the economic benefits would be enormous. We don’t expect Mr. Smith to admit that.

Posted 10/25/11 at 03:18pm By Van Le

“Verbal Brawl” Erupts at House E-Verify Briefing

lamar smith e-verifyWith all that’s been happening with the new immigration law in Alabama, it’s been hard to remember that there are, in fact, other balls still in the air re: immigration.

Take, for example, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)’s  mandatory E-Verify bill, passed through the House Judiciary Committee last month and lingering in the House ever since.  For those who don’t remember, E-Verify is the government database of names that employers would have use to ensure all new hires are documented.  In a post-immigration reform world where we had a legalized agricultural workforce, E-Verify might work; right now, however, its error rate threatens to put hundreds of thousands of Americans out of a job while devastating the U.S. agricultural industry.

Yesterday, a panel of speakers came to Capitol Hill to brief staffers on the bill, a “usually staid” kind of event “with representatives from advocacy groups offering perspective for legislative aides boning up on the issue du jour.”

Things got a bit testier once the panel ended and Andrea Loving, an aide to House Judiciary Committee chairman Smith, tried to "ambush" the speakers, “who had just spent half an hour trashing the bill she helped write,” according to National Journal’s Fawn Johnson.

Johnson relates the episode:

“None of you came to see me,” [Loving] said, obviously irritated, adding that the panelists misstated the facts about the E-Verify bill…

Arguments descended into chaos on Monday after Loving identified herself. (Read every quote in this article as a low-level yell.)

“Read the bill,” Loving told them.

“I wholeheartedly agree. Read the bill,” said David Burton, general counsel of the National Small Business Association, who earlier characterized the bill’s punitive measures as “off the charts nuts.”

“You don’t understand it,” Loving retorted.

“I’m sorry you introduced a bill that will do nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration,” said Andrew Langer, president of the Institute for Liberty, a watchdog group that tracks small-business regulations.

Philip Wolgin, an immigration-policy analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, recited a litany of statistics about delays that bona fide workers whose initial checks deem them unauthorized would face. Loving said the bill has built-in protections for those workers.

Now it was Competitive Enterprise Institute policy analyst Alex Nowrasteh’s turn. “When reality and the government collide, usually reality wins,” he said.

From Johnson’s account, it doesn’t seem as if Loving, or any the supporter of E-Verify at the hearing, walked away much convinced about the pitfalls of the bill.  That’s too bad; E-Verify, once thought to have enough supporters that it would sail right through the House, has been so thoroughly panned lately that it’s still waiting for floor time.  At last count, it’s been opposed by Democratic leaders, business interests, labor groups, libertarians, even Tea Party conservatives and the GOP 2012 contenders.  Word is really getting out that its bureaucratic flaws would actually cost many legal American workers and U.S. citizens their jobs during a bad economy, and all kinds of strange bedfellows are coming together to try and kill the bill.  Rep. Lamar Smith, and holdouts like Andrea Loving, should listen.

For more about E-Verify, check out our fact sheet.

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