You think Florida needs E-Verify? Really?
Listen to J.D. Alexander. Pull that 20-minute video clip from the Tuesday afternoon Senate session on immigration and just listen to him.
The Lake Wales senator pours his heart out on the reality the cold, light-of-day reality of using the costly, flawed, business-strangling E-Verify system. This is the system invented to check the legal-residency of new hires.
Alexander is an expert, thats why you listen to him. Personally, I think hes only expert on E-Verify up here. The rest of us just have opinions.
Critics say Alexander is knee-deep in conflict-of-interest. Of course he is. Thats because hes actually running a business we think we understand but actually havent got a clue about.
Alexander is a Big Ag man and more. Hes the CEO of Alico, an agribusiness and land management company of breathless proportions. His fairly substantial livelihood really does rely on migrant workers who may or may not be in the country legally. He admits all that. But hes also a patriot, and all his life the member of a conservative community that wants secure borders and no quarter for illegal aliens.
He has been using E-Verify for some time because, he says, I believe its the right thing to do.
But E-Verify is cumbersome and it's flawed, Alexander explains. You hire, run the test and wait. When name and documentation match, you're in clover. You've got "a legal." When it doesn't, it can take as long as eight days, and then -- if there's "no match," the employee has at least another week to locate the right paperwork. What do you do? Do you let him bring in the crop while he's waiting for papers? Under the Senate bill, Alexander would be fined $500 if the employee later were found to be illegal.
Other senators complained that an employee let go after two weeks for failing E-Verify would still be eligible to receive unemployment compensation.
All the while, these workers are terrified, Alexander says. "You look in their eyes ... These are people who live and breathe, just like us. They want to work. They want to pick our blueberries and bring in our crops. These people are feeding us."
Alexander says he pays blueberry pickers $5 a basket. Even at that, even though pickers can fill 30 baskets in a shift -- that's $150 a day -- he plain can't find enough American-citizen workers who want to spend their days in a field, and he can't complete a harvest.
"I'm telling you, if every employer in every area is required to use E-Verify, a lot of things in this country aren't going to happen," he warned.
It's the federal government at fault, he claims. And I believe he's right. Congress pays lip service to a guest worker program and has since early 1993 when President Bill Clinton failed to get not one but two attorneys general he wanted. Remember Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood? Each of them had a "nanny problem." Lots of talk, lots of nonsense, lots of movement to nowhere. The guest worker program is just another piece of rhinestone candidates flash along the campaign trail.
I believe in securing our borders. I don't believe in laws for some people and not for others. But America's immigration problem and the needs -- not just of American business, but of all the American people who rely directly and indirectly on immigrant labor -- present a complex puzzle that E-Verify is unlikely to solve.
Go on. Dial up the Tuesday afternoon Senate session and see what I mean about J.D. Alexander. For me, his candor is the highlight of the session.
Columnist Nancy Smith can be reached at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
