Menifee club pushing for immigration checks
 

Menifee club pushing for immigration checks

March 13, 2010

By JULISSA McKINNON
The Press-Enterprise

A Menifee club called "Conservative Activists" is trying to convince several cities to start penalizing businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

The group recently asked city councils in Menifee and Riverside to make it mandatory for businesses to use E-Verify, a computer program used through the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration to identify illegal immigrant workers based on information from a workers' Employment Verification Eligibility form.

Mayor Wallace Edgerton said the Menifee City Council will soon consider requiring businesses in the city to use the E-Verify program. Ted Wegener, who heads the group, proposed to the Menifee council that the businesses which don't comply should be denied business licenses or fined. Businesses that are repeat offenders could also face the city revoking their business license, Wegener said.

A recent report put forth by the Department of Homeland Security stated that 54 percent of illegal immigrants passed through E-Verify were still cleared to work because they are using false identities, including stolen or borrowed social security numbers. [Author of legislation for E-Verify states this is spin - will look up his opinion piece declaring such in the next day or few]

However, Wegener said he believes doing something about illegal immigrants is better than nothing, especially given Riverside County's dismal 15 percent unemployment rate.

"We want to see Americans take the jobs that the illegals take. I have neighbors and friends here who are unemployed who want to work," Wegener said, adding that they're willing to do any type of work.

"We're going to go wherever we think there's a conservative council that has a chance of doing it," said Wegener. He added that his group has plans to ask city leaders in Lake Elsinore, Hemet and Murrieta to adopt the E-Verify program. The city of Lancaster started requiring businesses to use the E-Verify program in December after Wegener's group made their appeal, Wegener said.

His motivation for going to local governments is that he believes the federal and state agencies aren't doing enough to curb illegal immigration from Mexico into the United States.

"Enforcement on the federal level is feeble and on the state level there's not the political will to do it," Wegener said.

Letter to the Editor of the Los Angeles Times on E-Verify



The Times stated that "E-Verify fails to flag illegal workers 54% of the time," but fails to clarify the numbers behind the 54%.

For the sake of simplicity, let's work with rounded numbers and say that last year there were 100 queries (or people) run through the E-Verify system. Of that 100, the audit found that 93 people were correctly authorized to work immediately. About six people were found unauthorized to work.

Due to identity fraud, about half of those six were authorized when they should not have been cleared to work. The other half were caught and denied work. The 54% only relates to the six people initially found unauthorized -- not to the entire 100 that were run through the system. Overall, 96 people out of 100 received accurate responses from E-Verify.

Only when it comes to E-Verify is 96% accuracy not good enough. Let's learn from the mistakes, make changes to combat identity fraud and recognize that E-Verify is the best, and only, tool to catch people working here illegally.

Ken Calvert

Riverside

The writer is a Republican member of Congress and the original author of the bill authorizing the E-Verify program.

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