WITH LITTLE FANFARE OR MEDIA attention President Bush last week signed an order requiring federal departments and agencies to hire only those contractors who use the electronic E-Verify system to verify that their employees are eligible to work in the U.S. Mind you despite the concerns voiced by the American worker and taxpayer, Bush’s Amending Executive Order 12989 was not done so in the name of national security or public safety, no, it was enacted to “promote economy and efficiency in federal procurement.”
Yes, you read correctly, forcing federal employers to utilize the federal “voluntary” e-verify system to merely make the government more fiscally thus economically efficient is the goal of the most spend happy conservative to ever have inhabited the White House. But I doubt that is all there is behind the president’s decision. I suspect he may understand that the world is watching our inability to deal with what seems an intractably deadly disgrace called illegal immigration.
America is only now realizing the scope of the national crisis which includes corruption in the workplace, I.D. theft, Social Security fraud, money laundering and the immoral exploitation of both the citizen worker but also the illegal alien worker. Our commander in chief actually made an executive decision to hold government employers and contractors accountable for following employment laws and not a moment too soon. Could terrorists use our shoddy accounting system to exploit our security weaknesses?
This is a huge step forward in cleaning up the national disgrace that illegal immigration has become. Remember our elected officials created this mess over a 20-year period and now President Bush takes a bold yet logical step forward.
But in signing the order, Bush did not say one word about it being against the law to hire an illegal alien and not one word about the practice of “see no evil, hear no evil” which has exposed the gaping hole and tremendous risk to our national security and public safety.
Proponents of law enforcement and national security should take notice of this executive order as the commander in chief now seems ready to support law enforcement and begin cleaning up the mess. Could this be a result of the mounting pressure from the American taxpayer?
It seems our message is coming through loud and clear — Americans are actively leading policy change by utilizing a bottom up approach that has led to the introduction of thousands of pieces of local and state legislation to address the problems associated with out-of-control illegal immigration. And the bottom up strategy is working and has led to this “top down” order for the federal government to clean up its own mess. The state’s rights movement is leading this policy change. States having the right to fix problems the federal cannot or is unwilling to resolve. This state’s rights movement is a much needed renaissance of an accountability check and balance system our founding fathers constructed to allow states the freedom to hold our federal government in check.
Federal departments and agencies must require contractors to use the e-verify system that validates the workers are eligible to legally work in the U.S. One must ask what took so long? A majority of law enforcement officials and certainly a majority of the American people have been scratching their heads for seven years wondering why such commons sense moves were never required after the murders of 3,000 American citizens on Sept. 11, 2001.
We have had, until now, a voluntary system to verify the Social Security and I-9 documents to weed out the undocumented workers. Congress now has the opportunity to act on a growing list of grievances, to follow President Bush’s lead and make e-verify mandatory for all employers in the United States, not just those responsible for government contract work.
A landmark precedent has been set; as stewards of security and enforcing our laws, of spending our tax dollars responsibly and interpreting our laws as Constitutionally sound, our three branches of federal government are now realizing they are being left in the dust by intrepid state representatives and governors. Their work is paying off and having a profound effect on the feds.
“It is the policy of the executive branch to enforce fully the immigration laws of the United States, including the detection and removal of illegal aliens and the imposition of legal sanctions against employers that hire illegal aliens,” the executive order says. We say thank you President Bush, will someone please ask John McCain and Barack Obama if they agree?
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 13, 2008. Read the original PDF.