Carcieri Hates “Illegal” Immigrants
Let’s review. On March 27th, Governor Carcieri issued an executive order which does the following:
- Compels the Executive Branch to verify the legal status of every employee by using the federal E-Verify program and “take appropriate action against those that are not eligible for employment, consistent with federal and state law.”
- Compels the use of the same E-Verify program for any contractor or subcontractor providing goods and services to the Executive Branch.
- Notifies those persons who have had their specific social security numbers used fraudulently by another “in order receive any benefit, including but not limited to child care, health care, any government issued identification card, including driver’s license and non-driver’s license identification, welfare or employment.”
- Trains state police officers in order to allow them to “assist ICE personnel in the enforcement of federal immigration laws.”
- Trains ACI corrections officers to do the same at the ACI.
- Encourages all local police officers “to support the enforcement of federal immigration laws by investigating and determining the immigration status of all non-citizens taken into custody, incarcerated, or under investigation for any crime and notifying federal authorities of all illegal immigrants discovered as a result of such investigations.”
- Facilitates coordination between local and state law enforcement and the ICE to deport criminal aliens.
While some of these provisions seem to make sense on the surface, most of them are ill-advised. The E-Verify program, a voluntary pilot program started in the 1990s, is rife with inaccuracies having a 4.1% error rate. This means that one out of 25 employees would not receive confirmation regarding their eligibility to work in the United States. They would then have to appeal to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to amend the database in order to be able to continue working. This unavoidable temporary state of unemployment may be disastrous for a number of government employees who would be prevented from their employment due to provisions on Carcieri’s order.
Some will probably say that a 4.1% error rate isn’t really that big of a deal. And if that’s the case, then why worry about the “illegal” population at all, it only being between 2% and 4% of the total Rhode Island population.
Additionally, training state and local police officers to become immigration officers is a VERY bad idea because it prevents the police from doing their job as effectively as they could. Regardless of whether or not police officers WILL verify the status of informants, witnesses, or victims of crime, the perception is enough to encourage the entire unauthorized population in the state to avoid talking to the police. Just the fear of deportation will be a sufficient enough reason for the undocumented population to not provide information to the police that may help them solve crime. The idea is so bad that there is significant police opposition.
Even the Governor’s DCYF Director, Patricia Martinez, is criticizing Carcieri on this issue.
I think the executive order along with what has happened in the media has really created an environment that is unfortunate,” Martinez said, speaking to The Journal yesterday after the annual Kids Count breakfast. “Whether it was the purpose or not, you talk to people in church, you talk to people in the supermarket, you go to the little hair salons, people are afraid. And not because they are undocumented, but it’s just because you are going to be stopped just because you look different, just because you have an accent, just because now it has created this hatred.”
The Rhode Island Democratic Party has been vocal in its opposition to the Governor on most issues, including his narrow-mined approach to “solving” illegal immigration.
We need sensible immigration policies in this country, but yesterday’s actions by the governor did nothing to move the ball forward. Maybe it’s time to remind Governor Carcieri that when his ancestors came to Rhode Island, along with thousands of other Italian immigrants, they were treated as second-class citizens. Is it his intention to return us to those dark times where immigrant bashing was fashionable and accepted?
It seems that the goal of the Governor’s policy is to deny employment opportunities for undocumented workers and thereby reduce a major “pull” factor for immigration to the state of Rhode Island. Very little thought is focused on the numerous other “pull” factors that facilitate the movement of peoples around the globe, specifically family networks.
One big problem with the entire immigration debate is the distinction of legal versus “illegal.” It’s a difficult situation to exclude the children of the unauthorized population from obtaining an education, from receiving needed child care, or from receiving treatment in hospitals. And for those children of authorized immigrants who were born in the United States, the point is moot because they are citizens regardless of the status of the parents. It’s apparent that the Governor assumes that the “illegal” population in Rhode Island is consuming vast amounts of limited resources, “draining money” from state and local governments through their dependence on the state’s welfare system. That simply is not true. And to prevent greater long-term economic consequences, it may be beneficial to provide certain benefits now (i.e. education, child care, food stamps, etc.) to prevent future economic distress.
What most people fail to recognize, specifically those who are opposed to immigration of the “illegal” kind, is that the immigrant population with which they are most concerned, the Latin American population, is most likely to work in low-wage jobs regardless of immigrant status. The economic reality of low wages ensures their reliance on welfare benefits. A better avenue to pursue, rather than blaming immigrants for being poor, would be to ensure that employment pays a sufficient wage to allow the workers to be able to provide for their families without additional government help.
The issue is complicated, and the Governor’s Executive Order doesn’t help.