Analyst's note:  Some people understand the problem and are working to solve the issues with illegal immigration.  We wish them success in helping take back our country from the brink of economic collapse.

One way to judge the likely effectiveness of Chairman Lamar Smith's national mandatory E-Verify bill is the panic it has caused among the nation's biggest promoters of illegal immigration.  They attack Rep. Smith's bill because they say it will take the incomes away from large swaths of America's illegal population.  Well, I guess that's the point isn't it, because those incomes will now go to unemployed American citizens and legal immigrants who already are here.

The big pro-amnesty coalition called Reform Immigration FOR America screamed in its mass email:

"Mass firings, mass deportations"
 

Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, was allowed by the authoritative The Hill publication on Capitol Hill to make personal attacks on Rep. Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee because his E-Verify bill (H.R. 2164) would give illegal-alien jobs to unemployed Americans instead of the illegal foreign workers:

(Lamar Smith is)  Congress's biggest obstacle to fixing one of our country's worst and most pressing problems . . . .  he has indicated that comprehensive immigration reform is dead on arrival in his committee . . .

Noorani's group was the lead group in the massive coalition that tried to pass the 2007 Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty.   He and others for months now have been waging a public relations campaign to demonize Chairman Smith as the man who more than anybody is standing in the way of the dreams of millions of illegal aliens to be given a permanent permission to keep their jobs.

Of course, that kind of demonization can cut two ways and establish Lamar Smith also as the man who more than anybody is fighting for the dreams of America's unemployed who want those jobs held by millions of illegal aliens.

America's Voice (a deeply ideological and partisan pro-amnesty group that formed after the 2007 amnesty defeat) reacted to Chairman Smith's introduction of H.R. 2164 with:

It’s going to be a long, hot summer for anyone who cares about sensible immigration reform, now that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is in charge of the House Judiciary Committee. . . . Smith’s motivation?  He wants to expel 8 million undocumented immigrants out of the formal labor market in hopes they will go home.  The strategy is called 'attrition through enforcement.'  

At Wednesday's committee hearing on H.R. 2164, the pro-amnesty champions echoed the warning of the advocacy groups that Chairman Smith's bill is the biggest threat to illegal immigration in years, if not ever.

They absolutely refused to accept that any unemployed Americans would want any of the 7 million-plus jobs held by illegal aliens in construction, service, manufacturing and transportation.  And they repeatedly decried Chairman Smith's refusal to give those 7 million-plus jobs permanently to the illegal aliens now holding them.

The pro-illegal-immigration officials and lobbies know what will happen if H.R. 2164 becomes law because what has happened in states like Arizona and Georgia with E-Verify laws that don't do half of what H.R. 2164 would do.  Illegal workers have been leaving those states in droves, even though the state laws only deal with new hires.  Chairman Smith's bill deals with all new hires but also with 99% of illegal aliens in their current jobs (something that no state law does).

Right now, a lot of the illegal workers who leave the four states with laws requiring E-Verify for all private employers tend to go to neighboring states and take jobs from citizens there.

But a national law will leave them no choice but to go back to their home countries.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA 

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