It would unbalance our bill. The bill. which has been before our committee for 4 years. studied very carefully. the ideal of the bill. the driving force of the bill. the goal of this bill was to be fair to all parties and to have balance. The driving force behind all the work that the Subcommittee on Immigration has done is to try to be fair to all parties. to try to have a bill which was balanced. to try to have a bill which treated all parties here equally. We seized upon the idea that even if you perhaps exempt small employers from keeping paperwork as a mandatory matterthey can keep it voluntarilybut even if they do not have to keep it mandatorily. certainly they should be liable if they transgress the law because under our law. our proposed law. you cannot knowingly hire an undocumented worker. You cannot just have an undocumented worker in your work force. you must knowingly hire in order to first get into the civil fines and eventually perhaps into the criminal fines and even perhaps into jail sentences. What the amendment of the gentleman from Texas would do is to exempt small employers. three or fewer. from the requirement of being sanctioned in the event that they knowingly hired an undocumented worker. We think this would unbalance the bill. It would have it asymmetrical instead of symmetrical. And we would. therefore. on behalf of the committee. at least on behalf of the gentleman from New Jersey and myself representing the majority in the committee. ask the House to vote down the gentlemans amendment in order to retain the present structure in the bill which does say to all employers. large and small. "You. if you knowingly hire somebody who is undocumented. you are going to be sanctioned." So I would urge the House to defeat the gentlemans amendment.
Keywords matched
undocumented Immigration