Peter Roskam and The Crisis That Isn’t

Peter Roskam’s website today announces his co-sponsorship of Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act of 2007 (SAVE). I haven’t had much time to look at this legislation yet. According to the website, it will add 8,000 new border patrol agents by 2012, mandate employers use the E-verify system to verify employee eligibility, add Immigration and Customs enforcement agents, and train state and local law enforcement agents to aid in immigration enforcement.

Roskam asserts that “millions of people cross our border illegally every year to work in a shadow economy, often in dangerous conditions and for wages the American worker can’t take” and calls this a “common sense approach to our nation’s massive illegal immigration problem”.

Well I may be the only person left who believes this but I think this immigration crisis rhetoric is bullshit. This is a crisis that was dreamed up by Republicans to distract the citizenry while they were picking their pockets. And now it disgusts me to see Democrats jumping on the “tough on illegal immigration” bandwagon.

Where Peter is correct is in saying that these undocumented workers often work in dangerous conditions for unjust wages. But I think he’s wrong to suggest that they are taking jobs from American workers. They are taking jobs that Americans don’t want and are paying federal, state, and local taxes on their incomes and purchases.

If Peter is serious about helping alleviate their dangerous working conditions and unjust wages, he should be pushing his party to expand the minimum wage and increase OSHA enforcement. Intensification of verification efforts and involving state and local officials in enforcement is likely to adversely affect workers who are here legally and increase hardship in immigrant communities.

I don’t care if I’m the only one who thinks so but all this so-called immigration reform legislation is just plain mean-spirited. It is worse still to see it promoted by self-described people of faith. They would do well to revisit Deuteronomy 10 where care of the stranger is described as part of the very essence of the law:

“For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of Lords, the great God , mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing. You also shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

I am totally opposed to the present efforts of legislators, Democratic and Republican alike, to lay more burdens on the backs of undocumented workers.