SRS Gives Preference to Illegal Aliens over Kansas Citizens;
Has Policy to Ignore Fraud and Costs Taxpayers Millions
By Richard Fry
I attended the hearing yesterday (3/10/11) on the Kansas omnibus “immigration” bill HB2372. This bill was largely drafted by current Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The bill includes an Arizona SB1070 type provision, tightens up the providing of benefits to illegal aliens, implements E-verify for state contractors and holds dishonest and unfair businesses accountable for “recklessly” violating the law by hiring illegal aliens.
As usual the supporters of the bill were outnumbered. The proponent conferees (those giving “testimony”) were outnumbered 3 to 1 and the attendees at least 2 to 1. Of course many of the opponent conferees and attendees were lobbyist or representatives of trade groups. It was disappointing to have the Unified Government of Wyandotte County represented by a paid lobbyist.
Citizens as Props
Conservatives Outnumbered Again
As usual there was speculation as to why the supporters of progressive principles (global citizens and open borders) were able to outnumber those who stood for the rule of law; Constitutional governance and fiscal conservatism were once again out numbers. Part of the problem was the very late notice of when the hearing would be held. Most only received notice of the hearing on Tuesday or Wednesday. Not much notice if you are trying to reshuffle your work scheduled or arranging to have your kids picked up from school. Although this was a particularly short notice the hearings are almost always too short to accommodate the average citizen. Sometimes it feels as if we “conservatives” are still the props in the conservative politicians’ play rather than the main character with our politicians in a supporting role, as it should be.
As with most factors relating to these types of issues there is a double standard anyway. In the 2010 session there were dozens of conferees supporting the Tenth Amendment Resolution (TAR) and only one conferee who testified against it. Likewise, of the over 500 attendees I did not see one person opposed to the TAR. However, at every opportunity the committee chairman, Tim Owens, mentioned that those present were the outspoken voices (loud mouths) for the measure but that there were many silent voices that opposed it and they, the politicians, had to represent the silent voices as well. Of course I have never heard Senator Owens plea for the “silent” voices before and certainly not for a conservative cause.
SRS gives preference to Illegal Aliens over Citizens and Approves of Fraud
An interesting development was the testimony of a former SRS caseworker who testified about the SRS policy to ignore fraud and to discriminate against citizens in favor of illegal aliens in awarding benefits. In determining eligibility for benefit the SRS considers the entire gross wages of the household, at least for citizens. Apparently
Kansas has adopted an OPTION for illegal aliens whereby they “prorate” some of the income the illegal alien (make illegally) to the illegal aliens and some to the “citizen” kids of the illegals. They only count the income allocated to the kids as the household income thereby reducing the gross income and making some illegal households eligible for benefits when a citizens household would be denied benefits and giving the illegal household more benefits that a citizen’s household with the same “gross” gross income and the same number of people in the household. This is clearly preferential treatment for illegal aliens over U.S. citizens and law abiding immigrants. The witness estimated that this “proration” costs Kansas taxpayers over 2.7 million dollars per year just in Johnson and Wyandotte counties.
The witness noted that 83% of their caseload had false Social Security Numbers (SSN) and a majority of these had “unassigned” SSNs i.e., valid SSNs that had not yet been assign to an individual by the Social Security Administration. This sounds like an inside job to me. As a matter of SRS policy the case workers had to accept fraudulent documents and were required to code fraud (DF) by illegals as noncompliance with SRS internal requirements for those seeking employment (DI). Also whereas citizens caught in fraud were prosecuted and suffered a loss of benefits the illegals really suffered no real loss of benefits. And it goes on and on.
When the caseworker brought these issues to management they showed no concern and no changes were made. Perhaps there wasn’t any concern because it was a waste of your money, my fellow citizens, not “management’s”. I don’t want those types of people working for me.
The Usual Suspects
Of course the lobbyist or other representatives of the contractors and builders association, the hotel and entertainment industries, the agricultural industry including the ranchers were well represented and the various Chambers of Commerce. Yes representatives of those who are widely known to be the biggest users and abusers of illegal aliens.
It was the same old story: e-verify will cost too much to implement and maintain (evidence shows otherwise), it will subject business to unfair scrutiny and fines and this is a matter for Congress. First, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that immigration is limited to who gets into the country, under what conditions and who and how they leave. Immigration authority does not extend to regulation and / or licensing of business, employer – employee relations, who drives, who has to pay what tuition etc. these are powers left to the states under their general police power. So no it is not a federal matter. I do not know why no one challenges these progressive folks on this assertion.
Second, in the 1982 case of Pyler v Texas the Supreme Court noted that Congress had been neglecting the immigration issue for thirty years. That has been almost thirty years ago, so Congress has neglected the illegal alien problem for almost sixty (60) years. In 1986 when the first Amnesty was given to illegals (there have been at least six since then) the estimated population was about 3.4 million. Now most experts agree it is between twenty and thirty million. Reality check! Congress is not going to address this problem unless forced to.
Third, it’s unfair to honest businesses and their employees to allow the unscrupulous businesses to get an unfair advantage by using illegal aliens as their labor force. I doubt if there are any honest companies in the house framing, roofing and sheet rocking businesses anymore. Other industries are under attack.
Fourth, they do not address all the other costs we citizens have to endure because of the presence of illegal aliens. Many of the costs are not financial. What cost do you put on the deterioration of our society and culture due to the breakdown of the rule of law, the almost 90,000 deaths here of our fellow citizens, and the stealth implementation of Spanish as our second language.
Conclusion
Once again a lot of our public servants are not listening to what “We the People” want. They are trying to do what they think is best for us, the world or who knows what else. The bottom line is we citizens are tired of being treated as a second class citizen in our own state and country and having to foot the bill to boot.
The reason we have not made more progress with our efforts to take back control of our government is not enough Americans are informed or involved. There is no longer a good reason for them to not be getting better informed and more involved. There are way too many people ringing the warning bell on what is going on to not invoke sideliners duty to investigate for themselves. At this point they should be considered greedy, lazy or plain un-American. Perhaps we should start directing some of our heat their way.
Second, we continue to play the other side’s game. Most of us want to continue to be politically correct and excessively civil. Some are afraid if we get too assertive we will be called an angry mob, kooks, Astor-turf, tea baggers, racist, and right- wing extremist and so on and so forth. Wake up they are already doing that.
Some say if we get too assertive with our politicians they will not help us or do what we ask. Wake up! Most of them are not doing anything for us now. Even Christ displayed some good ole righteous indignation on occasion and I think we should as well.
What say you?