The right wing claim that immigrants are stealing jobs is all about intimidating immigrants and dividing the working class, not about enforcing the law. The dirty secret is that the construction, agriculture, and hospitality industries are built upon exploited immigrant labor. Recent developments in Utah make this crystal clear.
Federal law makes it unlawful for any person or other entity to hire, recruit, or refer for a fee, for employment in the United States an alien knowing the alien is an unauthorized alien. The penalties are a $3000 for each illegal employee and a possible prison term of six months. It remains to be seen if the new Trump administration will take any action against employers, but a study of his first term did not find any criminal prosecutions of employers.
The E-Verify system was created by the Department of Homeland Security to allow employers to verify online that prospective employees are eligible to work in the United States. It was initially voluntary but various states, including Utah, have made use of the system mandatory.
Utah initially required that employers with at least 15 employees use E-Verify but, in 2022, it restricted the requirement to employers with at least 150 employees in order to ease labor shortages. A new bill reduced the threshold to 5 employees to ensure that only US citizens would be hired but, according to a story in the Salt Lake Tribune, after complaints by the construction industry, the bill was first amended to raise the exemption from 5 to 15 workers and then to 50 workers, and the effective date was pushed back to July of 2026. In the end, a committee voted to put the bill on hold following testimony about labor shortages, especially in construction, agriculture and hospitality.
It is time for Democrats to call the bluff of Republicans on immigration. Give law-abiding undocumented workers a pathway to citizenship while strengthening the penalties on employers who hire undocumented workers. For good measure, give rewards to employees who report unlawful hiring by their employers.