President Joe Biden’s amnesty plan, introduced in Congress on Thursday, continues protecting employers who hire illegal aliens over American citizens by excluding mandatory E-Verify.
The amnesty plan would push the roughly 11 to 22 million illegal aliens in the United States into legal status categories, allowing the majority to immediately start legally competing for scarce jobs against America’s working and middle class while helping businesses cut their labor costs and spike their profit margins.
For the millions more illegal aliens who would likely be added to the U.S. population over the next decade by surges of illegal immigration at the southern border and an open pipeline for foreign nationals to continue overstaying their visas without much enforcement, the plan does little to punish employers who hire them over Americans.
Specifically, the plan excludes requiring employers to use the E-Verify system, which screens the employment eligibility of a potential new hire. Even the laxest mandatory E-Verify provisions, which would exempt current hires from the screening requirement, are not included in the legislation.
While Biden’s advisers tout the plan’s increased penalties for employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens over Americans, the annual prosecutions for employers and businesses tend to be exceptionally low.
Even as at least eight million illegal aliens hold jobs in the U.S. labor market, only 11 employers and no businesses were prosecuted in 2018. Even fewer, just three of those employers received prison time.
The plan does include increased protections for illegal aliens who are working illegally. For instance, one provision ensures that illegal aliens are not deported from the U.S. while a worksite enforcement investigation is underway.
Similarly, the plan more easily allocates out U visas to illegal aliens who claim they are the victims of labor violations.
The plan’s introduction, via Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), comes as Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) have introduced a plan to nationally mandate E-Verify to protect American workers while gradually raising the minimum wage over the next four years.
Mandatory E-Verify for employers remains one of the most popular policies, uniting likely voters across racial, socioeconomic, and party lines.
A weekly survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports shows that more than seven-in-ten likely voters agree that mandatory E-Verify should become law to protect the U.S. labor market. This includes 74 percent of Hispanic likely voters. Less than 20 percent of likely voters oppose mandatory E-Verify.
Additionally, 65 percent of likely voters say it is better for employers to raise wages and try harder to recruit the 17.1 million Americans who are out of work rather than importing cheaper foreign workers. Another 61 percent of likely voters say the U.S. already has enough skilled talent in the domestic labor pool for employers to recruit from.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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