Mad about Pres. Obama’s illegal-alien uncle? Pass Lamar Smith’s ‘E-Verify PLUS’ & plug the ‘Uncle Omar Loophole’

His liquor store boss (Parimal Patel) says his family has been employing Pres. Obama’s illegal-alien uncle for most of the last decade.

Patel says Uncle Omar (a citizen of Kenya) had a good U.S. Social Security number, so how could the business have known it was illegal to hire him.

Well, we really don’t have to put up with those kinds of excuses any more. Under Lamar Smith’s  H.R. 2164 (as it currently stands), Uncle Omar couldn’t have gotten that job or kept it. 

Let’s not get so caught up in bellyaching about this latest outrage that we neglect to see that a solution is at hand in Congress this fall.  Under the slogan of “No More Uncle Omars,” Speaker of the House Boehner (R-Ohio) should see that H.R. 2164 comes to the House floor for debate, amendments and a vote this month. Then, on to the Senate.

The Boston Herald reports in the aftermath of an arrest of Obama Onyango (known as Omar) on drunk driving charges in Massachusetts: 

Conti Liquors owner Parimal Patel said he was flat-out floored to learn days later that Onyango is an illegal alien.

Patel said Onyango worked about five nights a week at the liquor store. He never questioned whether his trusted employee could work legally in the United States; he had an ID and a Social Security number, and that was enough to satisfy the payroll company, he said.

“He was the most genuine man you could find. He was honest, on point,” he said. “Honest to the point where I could leave a stack of cash here, and three months later, it’d be the same.”

Honest. Genunine. Great employee.  Papers that looked like they were in order. Let’s assume all of that is true.  It just makes the point that our present system DOES NOT WORK. 

There are millions of other cases very much like this in which employers feel like they have done enough to ascertain the legality of one of their workers. And that means millions of jobs are filled by illegal aliens that could have been filled by Americans who now are unemployed because of all the Uncle Omars.

APPARENTLY, NOT EVEN THE TOUGHEST OF STATE LAWS COULD HAVE STOPPED UNCLE OMAR

News reports thus far suggest that Uncle Omar in fact has a valid Social Security number that he got long ago perhaps during a short time when he may have been in the country legally. 

A number of states have admirably passed laws requiring NEW HIRES to be run through E-Verify.  These are wonderful first steps that begin to significantly reduce the number of illegal aliens holding jobs in those states.

But they wouldn’t have caught Uncle Omar in his job — because none of the state laws deals with EXISTING employees.

(Of course, talk of state laws has very little to do with states like Massachusetts which are unlikely on their own to ever crack down on illegal immigration.)

LAMAR SMITH’S BILL PLUGS THE E-VERIFY LOOPHOLES THROUGH WHICH UNCLE OMAR MAY HAVE PASSED 

H.R. 2164 — as currently written — does everything the state E-Verify laws do but also plugs the rather large loopholes through which many illegal aliens can currently pass.

In addition to requiring E-Verify for all new hires, the Lamar Smith bill requires the Social Security Administration to run two systems that will also catch EXISTING workers who have SS numbers that are fictitious or don’t match name and age or are stolen or that are connected to expired visas.

It is the combination of E-Verify and these proposed new Social Security notification systems that makes H.R. 2164 so incredibly more powerful than the current national voluntary E-Verify system or the mandatory E-Verify systems in more than a dozen states. 

Open-borders types insincerely criticize the E-Verify system because it doesn’t catch ALL illegal aliens.  But they are correct that E-Verify by itself it not nearly enough to take away the jobs magnet.

That is why Lamar Smith’s bill is so important — because it is “E-Verify PLUS.”

CONGRESS AIDED & ABETTED UNCLE OMAR FOR 15 YEARS BY REFUSING TO PASS VERIFICATION LAW

Setting aside all the incompetence (and perhaps more) that caused the federal government to allow Obama Onyango to remain illegally in the country apparently for two decades — despite deportation orders — this case should remind everybody in Congress that as long as the Uncle Omars of the world can so easily obtain payroll jobs (and keep them), our country will be full of absconders , fugitives and other illegal aliens.

Since 1996, Congress has turned down the efforts of now-House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) to pass national mandatory verification systems to take away the illegal wages that draw most illegal aliens to this country — and that enable them to maintain their illegal presence indefinitely. 

We citizens must be most diligent to ensure that the House does not change H.R. 2164 so as to protect the loopholes that people like Uncle Omar have been able to exploit for so long. 

Lamar Smith has led the fight for 15 years to keep U.S. jobs in the hands of American workers and out of the hands of illegal aliens. Uncle Omar has just given all of us a powerful new symbol of why we need to make this the last year Chairman Smith has to fight this verification battle.

— ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA