Reply #10: Most people don't look past the outrage. [View All]

[Igel]

The bill has a couple of interesting provisions. Not sure I'd call them "good." Just "interesting."

The first is that it makes it a misdemeanor to stop and hire a day laborer. I don't think it specifies documented or undocumented.

The second is that it requires an anonymous report form be drawn up so that people can report any suspected illegal immigrant hired by an employer. If a person doesn't use it, the report can still be deemed valid and investigated. The employer gets fined heftily if he can't weasel out by saying he didn't know. Note that Arizona already has a fairly draconian law nailing employers for hiring ineligible workers.

Having been in the position of hiring, I sympathize with the "knowingly" provision. I mean, when the I-9 went into effect I was given SS cards from the 1950s, '60s, '70s, and '80s. They were all different. Some could easily have been forged; none were, but I know that because I had known the people for years beforehand, and their parents (and in some cases their grandparents). And, of course, one had a name mismatch because everybody used the guy's middle name and that's the name he had been hired under--so that the SSA during a SSN verification binge bounced him and required that we correct our records. He wasn't "George", he was "Thomas G."

Yes, it's a provision that's abused. But do we punish the innocent to make sure we get all the guilty folk, or let some of the guilty slide to keep from punishing the innocent?