Speech #920219962

This section does not subject to any legal penalty the employer who unwittingly hires an alien who is in the country illegally. or whose employment is illegal under the circumstances of his admission. Such an employer. who has not "knowingly" employed such an alien. is unaffected by this proposal. Neither does the employee have any obligation to ascertain an employees immigration status. The offender against whom this language is directed is the employerand we have a few of them in this countrywho exploits the illegal alien. who. in so doing. depresses wages and working conditions for every resident worker. and especially for the lawfully resident alien. and who under present law. runs absolutely no risk. Here is how it works under present law. One of these employers will hire an illegal alien. He may promise him anythingbut he may well give less than he promised. In any event. he will probably pay him less than the minimum wage law requires. He will. in many cases. fail to cover the employee with social security. workmens compensation. health insurance or the other protective devices which the law. Federal and State. may requireand the employee is totally powerless to do anything about it. If the employee makes any gesture of complaint. the employer can make an anonymous call to the Immigration Serviceand the employee. already victimized by his employerpays all of the penalty. The next morning. the employer hires another illegal alien and the process begins again. The illegal alien is the victim. The lawfully resident alien. or the nativeborn citizen. is the victim because the wages and working conditions in jobs to which he may aspire. are held down through the competition from illegals. The employer shares none of the risk. Section 214 of the pending bill will not end this practice altogether. But it will give the immigration and naturalization people a tool which they can use to crack down on known and blatant offenders among employers. Some of us have been told that section 214 is discriminatory in its effect. that it will victimize particular groups of lawful residents. especially those of LatinAmerican and Caribbean antecedents. Mr. Chairman. let it be said that it is precisely these Americans who are now the chief victims of the wage and working condition deflation that is permitted and encouraged by that gap in existing law which allows the unscrupulous employer to simultaneously exploit the illegal alien and use the labor of that illegal to bludgeon further into poverty and oppression Americans of the same ethnic strain who live on this side of our borders. The language of section 214. Mr. Chairman. was taken directly from the H.R. 2328 administration immigration bill. introduced by the distinguished gentleman from Ohio . I did not include all the provisions of that bill. because of the persuasive arguments of civil libertarians. The original bill contained a provision which would have established a presumption that the employer was "knowingly" employing such an alien if he had failed to make an effort to establish the job applicants immigration status. This provision is not in section 214. and I would have to oppose its inclusion. If it were in the law. then. indeed. the job applicant of. let us say. the Mexican:American community. no matter if his family has lived on this side of the border since there was a border. could be required to show "proof of citizenship" while some Irish cousin of mine. fresh off the boat from Cork. might not.