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Thursday, May 22, 2008
SAVE Act gets another hearing, sort of
A House subcommittee on Thursday held a hearing on several immigration-related bills including one known as the SAVE Act.
The SAVE Act — or Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act — would increase the Border Patrol by 8,000, train more state and local police to enforce immigration law, and require that all businesses, within four years, use a government program to verify the legal status of their employees.
Most of the House members pushing the SAVE Act are Republicans, however the author of the legislation is a Democrat, Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina.
Shuler testified at the hearing of the Subcommittee on Border, Maritime, and Global Counterterrorism.
“Dishonest employers who seek to exploit low-skilled immigrant labor are the primary cause for the rapid increase of our illegal population,” he said.
In addition, Shuler said that illegal immigrants who traffic drugs are a problem in his district.
One of the main provisions in the SAVE Act, a federal employee verification program known as E-Verify, has been assailed by critics including Hispanic groups, immigrant advocates, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
They say it relies on faulty federal databases and would reject many legal residents and citizens by mistake.
Shuler said at the hearing that 94 percent of workers are approved in 5 seconds.
“I have the utmost confidence in the program,” he said.
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Immigration raid could limit supply of Kosher meat
A huge immigration raid last week on the country’s largest kosher slaughterhouse could have a substantial impact on the thousands of Jews who follow Jewish dietary laws, as well as on non-Jews who purchase kosher meat, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
The raid occurred last week at Agriprocessors Inc., a meat packing plant in Postville, Iowa. Nearly 400 workers were arrested on immigration violations and criminal charges. It is the latest in a string of enforcement operations around the country.
The raids have been controversial leading Hispanic lawmakers on Capitol Hill to denounce what they called “inhumane” tactics by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
ICE has denied such accusations.
Read the Washington Post story here.
