Immigration Reform

Background

Comprehensive immigration reform: Congress’s efforts for comprehensive reform fell apart in June when the Senate couldn’t get enough votes to proceed. The vote was 46 yes, 53 no; 60 yes votes were needed to keep the bill alive. Although action is not likely this year, a House bill is pending — H.R. 1645, the STRIVE Act, by Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). While not a perfect bill, this bipartisan legislation does contain the essential elements of comprehensive immigration reform.

“No-match” regulations: The Department of Homeland Security issued a regulation in mid-August that lists steps employers should take if they get a “no-match” letter from the Social Security Administration citing discrepancies between the social security number provided by an employee and Social Security Administration records. These include terminating employees if the discrepancy cannot be resolved within 90 days. The rules were supposed to take effect Sept. 14, 2007 but a court put them on hold citing discrepencies in how the rules were made. DHS is expected to reissue new rules in early 2008.

Some in Congress want to pass stand-alone immigration bills specifically targeting employers who hire undocumented workers. And the DHS announced in August that it will soon propose regulations to increase fines by 25 percent for immigration-related hiring and paperwork violations, and require businesses with federal government contracts to use the “E-Verify” electronic system to verify employees’ legal right to work.

Issue

The U.S. immigration system doesn’t reflect America’s need for workers. Our economy provided 134 million jobs last year, yet the government makes only 10,000 green cards available for service-industry workers each year. Over the next decade, the number of jobs in the foodservice business will grow one and a half times as fast as the U.S. labor force. At the same time, the number of 16- to 24-year-olds in the labor force — half the restaurant industry’s workforce — will not grow at all.

Congress’s approach must be comprehensive. There’s only one way to facilitate a sustainable workforce for the American economy while ensuring our national security and prosperity. Congress must pass comprehensive legislation that does four things: strengthen border security, establish a workable program to verify job applicants’ legal status, create a temporary-worker program to meet labor demands when there aren’t enough U.S. workers, and develop a plan to address the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States with over 175,000 in Oregon alone which is 10% of the Oregon workforce.

Targeting the nation’s employers is not the answer. While the government claims stepped-up enforcement through no-match letters will discourage future illegal immigration across our nation’s borders, in reality, all they are doing is eliminating a sizeable portion of the workforce without providing any legal avenue to hire foreign-born workers to do jobs that Americans are no longer taking. We encourage the White House and members of Congress to view employers as partners in economic growth and job creation instead of as adversaries in the immigration debate.

Employers are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Because of Congress’s failure to act, states and localities are passing their own immigration laws — some that conflict with federal requirements, others that go far beyond federal requirements. Confused and frustrated employers face a sea of changing and conflicting requirements. The Department of Homeland Security’s no-match regulations add one more element of confusion.

ORA Position

The Oregon Restaurant Association is opposed to the current “no-match” regulations or any individual pieces of reform and supports the House and Senate working together on a national level to enact comprehensive immigration reform. The Department of Homeland Security should reconsider the complex, confusing “no-match” regulations that are expected to be reissued in early 2008.