Underclass workers

By Galan Stewart in Salt Lake Tribune April 27, 2012

It was great to see the editorial "Enforce E-Verify: It’s time to provide penalties" (Our View, April 13).

Utah law "mandates" that all businesses with 15 or more employees use the free federal E-Verify program to determine if prospective employees are legal to work in the United States and to prevent ID theft of names of children for employment purposes.

About 5,461 Utah employers use E-Verify, with about 468 in the hospitality industry — hotels, restaurants and fast food. The hospitality industry has become the primary employer of illegal labor in Utah. Two large hotels have recently been busted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Grand America and Stein Eriksen).

Unlike jobs in manufacturing and technology, jobs in hospitality, construction, farming, etc., cannot be exported to cheap-labor countries such as China, so employers use cheap illegal labor instead.

Illegal labor serves the same purpose as indentured servitude and even slavery. It creates an underclass that must work for depressed wages. This flood of underclass workers suppresses the wages of Americans who would otherwise take these jobs.

E-Verify does not deport anyone; it simply levels the playing field for the unskilled American workers forced into poverty by employers ignoring the law.

Gaylan Stewart

Spanish Fork