There has been a surge in businesses that have volunteered to join the Basic Pilot Program Employment Verification System with the recent busts of thousands of illegal aliens at places like Swift & Company and Crider Inc..
Companies are now realizing that their business can be detrimentally affected in one single day for ignoring the issue of illegal immigration. One day you're making a ton of profit off the hiring of illegal aliens, the next you're facing massive fines and potential jail time.
Word is getting out in the illegal alien community too about which businesses are using the Basic Pilot Program and they are avoiding applying at those businesses.
Delaware News Journal
Brenda Dudley thinks word has gotten out that Star Building Services Inc. verifies employees' legal status.
Since it enrolled in a pilot program that checks employees' eligibility to work in the United States, the New Castle commercial janitorial company has seen a decrease in the number of unauthorized workers identified through the program.
To Dudley, that means job applicants know ahead of time they had better be in the country legally, or they won't be hired.
"It saves the company a lot of grief to know we've done everything in our power to make sure everybody's upfront and they're allowed to work," said Dudley, Star Building Services' executive assistant who is responsible for administering the verification program.
Now while this is all fine and dandy, there are a number of things that are wrong with the Basic Pilot Program that could be fixed to make it better. The program is currently voluntary. Congressman Ken Calvert introduced a bill last month that would rename the program and make the Basic Pilot Program mandatory.
Nationwide, nearly 14,000 employers have opted to join the Basic Pilot program ... During the first half of 2006, more than 900,000 queries were entered nationwide, said Shawn Saucier, spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program. Fourteen percent, or 128,000, came back flagged as potential unauthorized workers.
Only about 26,000 of those were contested, and 5,200 of them eventually were verified as eligible to work.
If they could improve this program and make it mandatory it would take the last leg out from under these agriculture, construction and other iducstries who thumb their noses at the US government and Americans while driving down wages and forcing the taxpayers to foot the bill for illegal aliens health care and education. Without the ability to work, illegal aliens will self deport back to their country of origin.
