Cities must step up to enforce immigration law

Agood day-labor center works for the community, for the worker and for the contractor, and it works within the laws of the city, the state and the nation. The problem is I have yet to find a good day-labor center. For the past year, I have looked at the day-labor centers in Burbank, Glendale, Laguna Beach, Pomona and Rancho Cucamonga. I have also seen the informal sites in Fullerton, Garden Grove and Lake Forest. None of them work right.

The day-labor centers that do not encourage the employer to screen the prospective worker for eligibility for employment in the U.S. are in violation of the laws and pervert the morals of the community. The centers may advertise that their workers are “registered,” but that doesn’t make them legal. What it does is set the unwitting employer up for federal prosecution ? for transporting, aiding and harboring of illegal immigrants ? and facing $3,000 fines and prison terms. Other crimes pervading the day-labor scene are fraud, tax evasion, employee abuse, safety violations and the underground economy. Not to forget the possibility of an injury, leaving the employer to pay from the home owner’s insurance policy.

Cities are not in the business of operating a business. Day-labor centers should be privately operated and regulated by city permit, available for inspection and audited quarterly or at least annually. Businesses like Labor Ready, Labor Connection and Westaff come to mind. They are similar to day-labor centers but are businesses that provide day laborers and operate within the laws.

Customers of day-labor centers should be required to obtain an annual permit from the city before they can hire a worker. The city should qualify the customer to hire from the center, but not eliminate the compliance with the laws ? like a business permit and contractor’s license. Conditions of the permit should include a training seminar, educating the employer in city, state and federal laws regulating business, employment and taxes. Seminars could be taught at local one-stop centers.

I’ve heard it before, the city doesn’t enforce federal laws. Truth is they do it every day. Or at least they abide by federal laws, and it shouldn’t be too much to ask the city to educate employers about the immigration forms and a few federal and state laws. Day-labor centers should generate funding, not depend on tax dollars or kickbacks from various organizations. Neither should day-labor centers be run by or influenced by any religious groups or churches. Sympathetic people and illegal immigrants become co-dependent on each other.

Some cities install signs, per their municipal codes, prohibiting or regulating solicitation for employment, aggressive solicitation and aggravated solicitation and trespassing, but then fail to adequately enforce their own laws, in effect allowing crime to grow in their community. If they would enforce their laws, they could ask for identification, and determine who is in their town and ship the illegal immigrants home. If this was done, it would reduce the loitering problems.

Day-labor centers seem to attract illegal immigrants, or at least suspected illegal immigrants. Because of this confusion, the operator of the day-labor center has responsibility for providing registration of the day laborers, but the employer or contractor has the ultimate responsibility ? before moving their vehicle 10 feet ? to determine if the laborer is legally eligible for employment in the U.S. This is done using the Employment Eligibility Verification form. The form applies whether the employment is for an hour, a day or longer. Per this form, it is OK for the employer to discriminate against the illegal immigrant, in employment.

Take an hour to visit a day-labor center, have a stack of these forms, a camera and a few pens. Give the forms to the laborers, and ask them to fill out section No. 1 of the forms. When they have done that ask them to hold the form to their chest as you take their picture. Next, ask them to provide at least one document from column A, on page 3. If they cannot provide one document from column A, then ask for one from column B plus one from column C. You keep the forms and pictures for your records. You did not affect a hiring, all you did was “pre-screen” a group of prospective employees. This completes your pre-screening of the day laborers. How many are eligible for employment in the U.S.? This is not harassment, it is the smart thing to do.

The idea is to encourage the illegal immigrants to deport themselves. The fact is, illegal immigrants should not even be in this country in the first place, and they should be reported and deported. Anyone hiring, transporting, harboring, aiding, abetting or employing an illegal immigrant should be arrested, tried, put in prison, and lose his or her property.

Part of the California Business and Professions Code says employers cannot hire illegal immigrants, and they should hire American citizens, but if no citizen is available to do the job, employers can choose to hire foreign “nonagricultural workers” workers if the worker has a visa. This would be determined by the above form.

Now, on to the five most dangerous words: “Maybe it will get better.”

I may be wrong, but I’ll venture a guess that there seems to be some level of organized distribution in the human trafficking of illegal immigrants across the United States. Part of the blame is the open border and lack of enforcement of the laws.

The situation has grown to a major problem, and it is attracting the attention of the citizens and patriots (dare I say Minutemen), who are acting under the Constitution and within the Bill of Rights, to step up and defend the nation. This action would not be needed if there were a state agency, trained and funded to enforce immigration policy, but failing that, the local police agencies should be empowered to shoulder the load and solve the problems caused by bi-partisan failure to control the situation.

We the people must never forget we are the employer who delegated the job to the elected government and their employees, but we cannot delegate the responsibility to ensure the job is done correctly. When we begin to take responsibility for our personal actions and the actions within our government, then our nation, states and towns will begin to get better. We the people must raise the village and the children within it. We must hold the elected government accountable to us, not to the invaders and their accomplices.

When we begin to deport the illegal immigrants and stop enabling them to be parasites, then we remove them from our parking lots, our sidewalks, our roads, our schools and our hospitals, and we send them back to become a burden on their own governments, not ours. If they want to reform their own governments and seek liberty, then they will be the better for it. But, I’ll not sit idly by and watch as my nation is invaded.

Some who read this may want to call me a racist, but I did not choose the color of the invader or where he came from, nor did I make the decision to invade a sovereign nation. Those facts are not under my control, and I will not accept responsibility.

Some may say I am spewing hate, but I will say I am trying the “truth and tough love” approach first; the “hate with extreme prejudice” may be needed later, so I’ll keep that on the back burner.

GERRY NANCE

Fullerton

dpt.13-jobcenter-old-BPhotoInfo5H1PTPR720060413iepmw2kfMARK C. DUSTIN / DAILY PILOT(LA)Workers outside the now-closed Job Center wait for employers in March of last year. Gerry Nance writes that most job centers don’t work well.