Op-Ed: Why Won't Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Work to Remove Huge Incentive for Illegal Immigration?
The state of Texas is under invasion and millions of illegal aliens are pouring across the border.
While the radical left might claim these individuals are asylum seekers or refugees, everyday Americans know them to be economic migrants. Indeed, experts say employment is the most powerful driver of illegal immigration.
American employers pay far better wages than businesses in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua, and the prospects of better pay and quality of life is a powerful incentive for citizens of those and other countries to travel thousands of miles and go into business with narcoterrorist cartels to come to the U.S.
So why isn’t Texas Gov. Greg Abbott working to remove this incentive?
While it is against federal law to hire someone who is not lawfully present in the U.S., businesses and contractors routinely choose to violate the law and hire illegal aliens anyway because they are often willing to work for lower wages than American citizens. As a result, Americans suffer harm on two fronts — lower wages and an increase in illegal immigration.
Republicans know the solution: mandate the use of E-Verify, a federal program that checks the legal status of potential workers for employers, and impose real penalties on businesses that flout federal law and hire illegal aliens.
According to Rasmussen, 71 percent of Texas voters believe the government should mandate the use of the E-Verify system to ensure U.S. jobs go only to legal workers.
The issue is even more popular among Texas Republican primary voters. In a poll released in March, Defend Texas Liberty PAC found that 82 percent of Texas GOP voters support requiring Texas employers to use E-Verify to screen potential workers and making it a felony for individuals to use false identification to obtain employment.
Despite the support for E-Verify among Texas voters, Abbott has been nearly silent on the issue since passing a weak bill that only requires E-Verify for state employees and contractors in 2015. And even that bill lacks teeth.
Since then, no legislation to strengthen state law and apply it to all employers has moved in the Texas Legislature. That includes the most recent session and state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst’s Senate Bill 1621, which died without Abbott’s support and without a vote in the Texas Senate.
Abbott’s refusal to champion the issue also puts him out of step with the majority of the Republican presidential candidates.
The frontrunner in the Republican primary, former President Donald Trump, campaigned on requiring E-Verify and promoted such legislation during his time in office but was unsuccessful in passing the policy into law due to establishment Republican resistance.
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who polls show is currently in second place, was successful in getting the policy across the finish line. This May, DeSantis signed Florida Senate Bill 1718 into law, which mandates E-Verify for employers with 25 or more employees in the Sunshine State.
“The Biden Border Crisis has wreaked havoc across the United States and has put Americans in danger,” DeSantis said in a statement.
“In Florida, we will not stand idly by while the federal government abandons its lawful duties to protect our country. The legislation I signed today gives Florida the most ambitious anti-illegal immigration laws in the country, fighting back against reckless federal government policies and ensuring the Florida taxpayers are not footing the bill for illegal immigration.”
Even former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who political analysts argue represents the establishment wing of the Republican Party, supports E-Verify, having signed it into law over a decade ago.
Today, nine states have mandated E-Verify for all or most employers (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah). Texas should be among them.
If Abbott is serious about securing the Texas border, he should publicly announce support for requiring E-Verify for Texas employers and ensure that legislation to that effect is passed by the Texas Legislature in a special session.
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