Welcome to the OFIR immigration topics section. Topics are presented in a list below. You can click on a topic to view information contained under the topic. When topics have several sub-sections, you will be able to "drill down" to read each section, then go back up to the main list of topics when you are finished.
Immigration topics:
Oregonians for Immigration Reform Scholarship Application – Due April 15, 2012
1st place $1,000 2nd place $750
Scholarship Essay Question (minimum 1,000 words):
Do you believe that unchecked illegal immigration and excessive legal immigration will have a negative impact on your future? If so, why and in what way? What could you do, as a US citizen, to ensure immigration laws are enforced, strengthened or changed?
Applicant requirements:
1.) Applicant must be a US citizen, and resident of Oregon.
2.) Applicant must be a college bound senior in good standing at their high school or an undergraduate that is currently enrolled in college.
Guidelines:
1.) Applicant will provide all information listed below, include a photo and attach the essay.
2.) All applications, essays and photos become the property of OFIR for promotion.
3.) All applications are due by April 15, 2012. Winners will be announced May 1, 2012.
4.) Questions? Call 503.435.0141 or 503.581.6485 or visit our website at www.oregonir.org
5.) Mail completed application to:
OFIR
PO Box 7354
Salem, OR 97303
Judging:
OFIR Board members will read and evaluate all applications. The final selection will be made by the OFIR President and Vice President. In the event that not enough applications or no suitable applications are received, there may not be a winner at all levels. OFIR reserves the right to not announce a winner. OFIR will announce the winner(s) at the May 12, 2012 OFIR meeting in Salem and are hopeful that the winners can attend to be honored. Scholarship checks will be deposited at the student’s school of choice in their name.
Please include in your application:
Your full name, address, birth date, and contact information. (You must be a US citizen and an Oregon resident to apply. How long have you lived in Oregon?)
The name of the High School you attend, include your GPA and the name and phone number of a contact person at the school.
OFIR would like to get to know you a little better:
Write a short paragraph about yourself. What hobbies or interests do you enjoy? What subjects do you enjoy in school?
Name and contact information of 1 reference (no family) that has known you more than 3 years.
Be sure to include the name and address of the college you plan to attend.
Attrition Through Enforcement means that as existing immigration laws are enforced, more and more illegal aliens will find it difficult to work in the United States. Likewise, enforcement of existing immigration laws will make the United States less enticing for illegal aliens to sneak into in order to earn higher wages.
It is not necessary to spend money and law enforcement effort to round up the millions of illegal aliens who have taken jobs from Americans. By enforcing our existing laws, illegal aliens will self-deport - meaning that they will pay their own way to voluntarily go back home and reunite with their families.
E-Verify is a voluntary, free internet program that allows employers to verify the work eligibility of new hires. Administered by the Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS-USCIS), E-Verify compares information from an employee's Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.
E-Verify is a voluntary, free federal internet program that allows employers to verify the work eligibility of new hires. Because E-Verify is successful in identifying illegal aliens seeking jobs, some local and national proponents of cheap foreign labor try to prevent its application by misrepresenting the program.
A common, unsubstantiated charge is that legally eligible workers are harmed by it because the program is so inaccurate.
Suzanne Bonamici, running for election to Oregon’s Congressional District 1, called E-Verify “notoriously unreliable,” in a candidate debate sponsored by the Portland League of Women Voters and the American Association of University Women, on Dec. 6, 2011.[1]
Here are some facts about E-Verify.
“Rosemary Jenks, the lawyer who heads up NumbersUSA's Capitol Hill Team, has repeatedly and publicly issued a challenge to the media and open-borders advocates to produce even one example of an American losing a job because the E-Verify system wrongly ordered it.
“If it turned out that of millions of transactions a year, there were 10 or 20 mistakes, we would be concerned but also find that to be an understandably tiny problem.
“But, to date, opponents have NOT BEEN ABLE TO FIND an example of even ONE AMERICAN who lost a job due to problems with E-Verify.”
--The Biggest 2 Lies About E-Verify (arguments opponents use to keep hiring illegal aliens), by Roy Beck, Jan. 31, 2009.
The DHS Citizenship and Immigration Services currently reports that as of the time period October 2009-September 2010, 98.3 % of employees were automatically confirmed as work authorized either instantly or within 24 hours, requiring no employee/employer action.
As of the same time period, October 2009-September 2010, only 1.7% of employees received initial system mismatches (tentative non-confirmations). Of those employees, 0.3% (3/10 of one percent) were later confirmed to be work authorized after they contested and resolved the mismatch. This means that E-Verify is currently over 99% accurate. See these figures on the DHS-USCIS website.
E-Verify is regularly updated and enhanced to improve its accuracy and usability. For a description of E-Verify program improvements, see the E-Verify History and Milestones webpage.
In December 2011, E-Verify reached a new record: employers are now using E-Verify at more than one million worksites.[2]
In October 2010, DHS-USCIS published findings from its Customer Satisfaction Survey. (See the full report.)
Following are excerpts from the Executive Summary:
“This report focuses on the customer satisfaction of companies currently enrolled in the E-Verify program. The Customer Satisfaction Index for E-Verify is 82. This is a positive result, especially when compared to benchmarks such as the latest federal government satisfaction index, which is 69. Even more so when considering that many of the users signed up not voluntarily, but because of a requirement from local, state or federal government or a parent company.
“In addition to rating overall satisfaction with E-Verify, users evaluated different areas of performance involving E-Verify depending on whether that particular area applied to the user. Using E-Verify is one of the highest rated areas and has the most impact on customers’ satisfaction with E-Verify. Users rated the initial response as being quite fast and submitting I-9 information being easy. Next steps were fairly clear in the response and navigating the website was relatively easy. …
“About one-third (31%) of users indicated they were asked to match a photo and Photo Matching was the highest rated area, as users rated it being easy to use and quite helpful in preventing fraud.
“Less than one-third (29%) of the respondents received a Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC). Of those who did, they rated this process as being adequate with scores in the upper 70’s. Rated equally well were the ease and speed of resolving the case as well as the clarity of communications about steps involved in the resolution process. …
“Users stated they were likely to recommend E-Verify and they also have a high degree of confidence in its accuracy. Respondents also indicated that they are very likely to participate in the future with a rating in the low 90’s for future participation. …”
Linda Chavez in a column of Dec. 30. 2011,[3] asserted that the failure rate for identifying illegal workers under E-Verify is almost 50 percent, arguing this disqualifies the program for mandatory use. Other open-borders advocates also cite the same criticism.
Jack Martin, FAIR Special Projects Director, answers that criticism succinctly:[4]
“It is clear that some illegal alien workers escape detection by the E-Verify system, but no one knows how many. The false confirmation percentage cited in the GAO [Government Accountability Office] report was an estimate by a government contractor. Since that GAO report was issued, Richard Stana, the GAO director for homeland security and justice, reported to Congress in February 2011, ‘USCIS has reduced the incidence of ... E-Verify's vulnerability to fraud.’ And further progress in reducing false confirmations will be made when E-Verify is made a national mandatory system for all employers because the proposed legislation requires SSA to report evidence of false use of SSNs.
“The irony in the claim of unreliability of the E-Verify system is that it is not being made as an argument for improving the system. It is cynically being made by defenders of illegal aliens in an effort to prevent E-Verify from being expanded nationwide. They are trying to preserve job opportunities for illegal workers.”
[1] http://blip.tv/community-media-videos/league-of-women-voters-oregon-dist-1-congressional-candidate-forum-5799173
[2] E-Verify Connection, January 2012, Issue VI. [E-Verify-Connection06.pdf]
Charges are made by opponents of E-Verify that the program cannot handle the large volume of work necessary for mandatory nationwide use. These charges are refuted in statements from some of the leading officials of the Department of Homeland Security’s Citizenship and Immigration Services, cited below.
1. Debunking the E-Verify Capacity Problem, by Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy, Department of Homeland Security. May 21, 2008. (Second in a series on E-Verify issued in the DHS Leadership Journal)
"Based on a recent load testing, the system has the capacity to handle 240 million queries a year. That’s three to four times the number of people who are usually hired in a given year."
2. The following is quoted from Congressional testimony on June 10, 2008 by Jonathan R. Scharfen, Deputy Director, USCIS:
"The E-Verify program infrastructure is capable of handling the volume of queries that would be necessary for a nationwide mandatory employment verification system.
"DHS and SSA conducted cooperative end-to-end load testing of the Verification Information System (VIS), which is the database that supports E-Verify, in September of 2007. The results of the testing showed that E-Verify has the capacity to handle up to 60 million queries per year. This capacity is in line with the projected 60 million new hire queries per year that would result from mandatory E-Verify legislation applicable to all U.S. employers. DHS will continue to work with SSA to update the current pilot architecture to ensure that DHS and SSA can provide the most stable environment possible to the employer community and to create an independent environment for E-Verify queries, separate from SSA’s other processing needs."
3. Later Congressional testimony on Feb. 10, 2011 by Theresa Bertucci, Associate Director, Enterprise Services Directorate, USCIS, confirmed the capacity of the E-Verify program:
"Ensuring Future Capacity to Administer Increased Use of E-Verify.
"The E-Verify program is well-equipped to handle continued expansion. E-Verify currently has the capacity to receive at least 60 million electronic queries annually if all new hires were run through the E-Verify program. USCIS has invested in a dedicated information technology environment to transfer data from E-Verify to SSA to handle increased growth in query volume. To further help ensure continuous service in the future, USCIS expects to execute a service-level agreement with SSA in the near term. The service-level agreement will define the requirements for SSA to establish and maintain the capacity and availability of its system to support E-Verify."
4. E-Verify job-check system has room to grow, agency says, by Stephen Dinan, in The Washington Times, March 15, 2012.
" ‘We have the capacity currently to process far more queries than we currently handle. And so we can right now handle the expansion of E-Verify to additional states. But if it was mandated across the country, it would take us some time to ramp up for that exponentially greater volume,’ said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that handles legal-immigration benefits.
"An aide on the Judiciary panel said Mr. Smith's legislation [H.R. 2885] phases in the checks, which would give E-Verify a chance to ramp up. It also gives the Homeland Security secretary a waiver power to delay implementation for six months.
"As for additional resources, the aide said, the administration could submit any new needs to the Appropriations Committee. …"
Note: There are two bills currently before Congress calling for mandatory E-Verify (H.R. 2885, The Legal Workforce Act, and S.1196, the Accountability Through Electronic Verification Act). Both bills call for phasing in the mandatory requirements over a reasonable period of time; they do not require instantaneous implementation.
Descriptions of the bills can be found on the website of NumbersUSA at: https://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn/attrition-through-enforcement/interior-enforcement/interior-enforcement.html-0
May 5, 2012
1. Federation for American Immigration Reform. Mexican Matricula Consular ID cards. 2003. 2 p.
Contents: Aiding illegal immigration, National security risks, Legal liability, Dangerous precedent.
2. Dinerstein, Marti. IDs for illegals; the ‘matricula consular’ advances Mexico’s immigration agenda. 2003. 11 p.
Summary of the report at:http://www.cis.org/node/484
Among the findings in the report: "The matricula consular is useful in the United States only for illegal aliens, because legal immigrants, by definition, have U.S. government-issued documents."
3. Durham, NC to accept Mexican document as ID. (In FAIR’s Legislative Update, Nov. 22, 2010.)
2-page report, by FAIR, of action by the Durham NC City Council, with background on the matricula consular, its limitations, and links to pertinent sources.
4. Wikipedia.Matricula consular. 2 p.
A useful summary, with list of 18 references cited and linked.
5. U.S. Immigration Support. Matricula consular. 2 p.
Another helpful summary, compiled by a business that calls itself "Your online guide to U.S. visas, green cards and citizenship."
6. Mexico. U.S. Consulate. The Matricula Consular.
Gives requirements to obtain a matricula consular, secondary requirements, procedure followed when issuing, data capturing, etc.
7. U.S. General Accountability Office. Border security: Consular identification cards accepted within United States, but consistent Federal guidance needed. (GAO-04-881) August 2004. 51 p.
Page 50 displays a letter to the GAO from C. Stewart Verdery, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Policy and Planning, Border and Transportation Security Directorate, Department of Homeland Security. The letter concludes:
"This draft report suggests incorrectly that the Administration has no clear position on CIDs. It is well established that foreign consular ID cards do not establish or indicate lawful U.S. immigration status and should not be viewed as valid for that purpose, nor do they establish a foreign national’s right to be or remain in the United States. This is a clear and settled position.
"Finally, it is important to note that DHS does not recognize CIDs as valid travel documents and CIDs are not accepted for that purpose at the more than 300 ports-of-entry where Customs and Border Protection officers screen travelers seeking admission to the United States."
8. National Conference of State Legislatures. Consulate identification cards. April 28, 2004.
Contents: What are the requirements, Federal action, Financial institutions, Law enforcement, State and local government.
9. Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. The Mexican matricula consular (illegal alien) ID card is now illegal in Colorado!
Describes the law passed in CO in 2003, gives its history, and related information.
10. Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. The Mexican matricula consular (illegal alien) ID card: Activist Toolkit.
An outline of the successful efforts made by Colorado activists to ban use of the matricula consular, designed to show how other states can do likewise.