07/15/11 According to the ACLU, Rep. Lamar Smith's deceptively named "Keep Our Communities Safe Act" bill "would in fact lead to the detention of thousands more immigrants for years without first having a hearing before a judge."
Read More »

07/12/11 Last week, New America Media asked an important question about an industry directly impacted by immigration: Slow Flow of Immigrants Already Impacting California Farms? Some say yes. Others, not yet. But if Lamar Smith's E-Verify bill passes nationally, there will be a worker shortage -- and crops rotting in the fields.
Read More »

07/07/11 Rep. Lamar Smith's battle with Markos Moulitsas (of Daily Kos) continues. Rep. Lamar Smith has very, very thin skin. He does not like to be criticized, nor does he allow any critique of his flawed E-Verify legislation go unrebutted. The problem for Smith is that he's got no facts to back up his position, practically handing off yet another win to Markos.
Read More »

07/07/11 Rep. Judy Chu (D-CA) sits on both the House Judiciary and Small Business Committees. She's a strong opponent of Rep. Lamar Smith's E-Verify bill. From her unique vantage point, Chu told her colleagues, "Mandatory E-Verify Legislation will Cripple Small Businesses."
Read More »

07/06/11 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) continues to insist that his forced E-Verify legislation would be a good thing for the U.S. economy and U.S. job seekers. However, Smith's fellow conservatives and leading libertarians disagree.
Read More »

07/01/11 Rep. Lamar Smith claims E-Verify "is not an immigration bill, it's a jobs bill." But, Smith's definition of a "jobs bill" is one that kills 770,000 jobs, forces millions into an administrative quagmire, destroys America's agriculture industry and imposes new taxes and red tape on small business.
Read More »

07/01/11 The American agriculture industry "fears a disaster" if Rep. Lamar Smith's E-Verify legislation becomes law. The current situation in Georgia, which passed a state E-Verify and now has crops rotting on the vine, gives credence to those fears. Smith's bill poses grave dangers for farmworkers.
Read More »

06/29/11 Today, we heard an important pronouncement from President Obama at a White House press conference. The President made it clear that mandatory E-Verify without comprehensive immigration reform is unacceptable. On E-Verify, the President gets it.
Read More »

06/27/11 Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported that the U.S. agricultural industry was gravely concern about the prospects of E-Verify legislation, which is sponsored by one-third of our "Three Amigos" on immigration: Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX): The agriculture industry fears a disaster is on the horizon if the one bit of new immigration policy that Congress seems to agree on becomes law.
Read More »

06/24/11 Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is promoting his E-Verify program as a "jobs" bill that will ease unemployed Americans' woes. It's telling that the first GOP "jobs plan" introduced this year would send unemployed manufacturing workers in Ohio or Michigan to the fields to pick fruit and vegetables. It's best described as a 21st Century Grapes of Wrath.
Read More »

06/24/11 House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX), Immigration Subcommittee Chair Elton Gallegly (R-CA), and Immigration Subcommittee Vice Chair Steve King (R-IA) -- our "three amigos" on immigraton -- keep advancing their wish list of immigration "reforms" that would tighten the screws on immigrants of ALL statuses.
Read More »

06/20/11 The Smith-Grassley push to make the ineffective and burdensome E-Verify program mandatory nationwide continues to generate significant opposition from a broad range of observers, from the editorial board of La Opinion, the largest Spanish-language daily in the U.S., to the Service Employees International Union, to respected columnist Andres Oppenheimer. Interestingly, the Smith plan is also garnering strong opposition from the extreme right of the GOP.
Read More »

06/16/11 Yesterday, Congressman Lou Barletta (PA-11) released a statement expressing his strong opposition to Lamar Smith's E-Verify legislation, which would require all employers in the U.S. to use the flawed government program known as E-Verify to evaluate whether an employee is legal to work.
Read More »

06/15/11 Yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) each introduced their own versions of mandatory E-Verify legislation. Freshman senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is an original cosponsor of the Grassley bill. Marco Rubio might have stayed out of the immigration debate in Florida but he definitely isn't staying out of the national debate. After E-verify failed in Florida because of opposition from the business and Latino communities Marco Rubio is now throwing his support behind a bill that would nationalize and make mandatory that same program.
Read More »

06/15/11 Today House Republicans, led by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Elton Gallegly (R-CA), and Steve King (R-IA), unveiled the top bill on their anti-immigration agenda: a plan to make all employers in America use the deeply flawed E-Verify program to check the immigration status of their workers.
Read More »

06/14/11 The Los Angeles Times published a rebuttal to yesterday's glowing, but deficient in facts, op-ed on E-Verify from Representatives Lamar Smith and Elton Gallegly. Today, Raul A. Reyes actually uses facts to deconstruct the Smith/Gallegly spin on a program that would cause massive job losses -- and has the potential to wipe out the agriculture industry.
Read More »

06/13/11 Arguing that he is only looking to keep communities safer and combat undocumented immigration, the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is pushing through two problematic bills with serious ramifications for due process of the law and for workers, including citizens and permanent residents.
Read More »

06/13/11 Representative Lamar Smith and Elton Gallegly wrote an op-ed in the LA Times about their E-Verify bill. They forgot to mention their plan would cause the loss of almost 800,000 jobs, force 4 million more workers into an administrative quagmire, cause an undue burden on small businesses, nearly wipe out the agricultural workforce, result in the loss of tax revenue – and, to top it off, E-Verify a failure rate of over 50%.
Read More »

06/08/11 Last month, Georgia passed one of the harshest new immigration laws in the country. Today, the AJC reports that nearly half of the 132 Georgia businesses polled in a private survey this month say they are experiencing agricultural labor shortages.
Read More »

06/07/11 A new study from UC Davis found that stricter Immigration enforcement could have a harmful effect on California's agricultural industry. It could lead to more imports and "significantly boost labor costs."
Read More »

06/06/11 Because of the mandatory E-Verify legislation being pushed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the Associated Press reports that "The agriculture industry fears a disaster." Smith and his GOP colleagues are telling the American Agriculture industry to "Drop Dead."
Read More »

06/03/11 The Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), who fancies himself something of an expert on Latino politics, recently sent around a "Dear Colleague" linking to a Rasmussen Reports poll on workplace immigration enforcement. Smith is an ardent advocate of E-Verify and intends to introduce legislation to make it mandatory for all businesses and workers in the U.S.
Read More »

06/02/11 Rep. Lamar Smith, the Republican Chair of the House Judiciary Committee -- and one of the notoriously anti-immigrant "Three Amigos," just can't help himself when it comes to attacking and demonizing immigrants. Today, This time, Smith -- the GOP's top political strategist for Latino outreach -- is taking on asylum-seekers fleeing persecution and seeking freedom in America.
Read More »

05/31/11 This in from Ruben Navarrette last night: You would think that the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee would have better things to do than respond to every column that mentions him.
Read More »

05/27/11 Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling to uphold Arizona's law requiring state businesses use the E-Verify system strikes a crushing blow to the Arizona agriculture industry. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) wants mandatory E-Verify at the national level, which would devastate the American Agricultural industry. In the absence of Comprehensive Immigration Reform at the Federal level, Smith's mandatory E-Verify will deport farms and jobs.
Read More »

05/24/11 Over the next couple weeks and months, we're expecting the anti-immigrant legislation, E-Verify, to start moving in the U.S. House. It's sponsored by Representatives Lamar Smith (TX), Elton Gallegly (CA) and Steve King (IA), who hope this legislation will lead to mass deportation. Fortunately, a strong coalition is building to fight E-Verify. And, it includes a united front from the labor movement
Read More »

05/23/11 Imagine if Democrats proposed legislation that would cause the loss of almost 800,000 jobs, force 4 million more workers into an administrative quagmire, cause an undue burden on small businesses, nearly wipe out the agricultural workforce, result in the loss of tax revenue – and had a failure rate of over 50%.
Read More »