Kansas Republicans are at odds regarding immigration.
Big business prefers a lax hand, while hard-liners favor strict enforcement of sending illegals home.
And once again, the Kansas Legislature failed to enact E-Verify legislation.
Participation in the federal program is voluntary, though more and more states are making it mandatory.
E-Verify requires companies having contracts with the state worth more than $50,000 to submit a notarized statement saying they used E-Verify to check the status of new employees.
E-Verify is a federal database that enables employers to check a potential or current worker’s eligibility to work in the United States. The system was authorized by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
Kansas feedlot and dairy owners, among others, say they can’t find enough U.S. citizens to work the back-breaking, low-paying jobs typical of their industries, and are against the verification system. The state is estimated to have 45,000 undocumented workers in its ranks.
So far, Kansas has been willing to turn a blind eye in favor of this pro-business attitude, while at the same time negating food stamp benefits to hundreds of U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants.
We’re willing to tolerate immigrant labor as long as we don’t have to treat them like human beings.
IMMIGRATION is probably the only issue that pits big business and the powerful Kansas Chamber of Commerce against Kris Kobach, Kansas’s secretary of state who has made immigration his cause celebre.
Kobach has called a proposal by the Chamber regarding immigration nothing more than “amnesty.”
The idea was to allow undocumented immigrants to be able to remain in Kansas if they work in jobs in agriculture and other industries that are struggling through labor shortages.
That is, they want nothing to change.
For good reason. In Georgia, where strict immigration laws exist, an estimated loss of $140 million in crop revenues in 2011 came from a work shortage of immigrant labor.
