Florida farmers, worried that lawmakers could strip them of their largely undocumented workforce, are warning of an impending crisis in their fields.
Those growers admit that at least 75 percent of their workers are in the U.S. illegally. Most of those workers buy fake Social Security cards and employers generally issue paychecks and deduct payroll taxes and Social Security taxes which they attribute to those false numbers. In that way employers fulfill their legal obligation. They are not obliged to check if the numbers are legitimate.
But a bill now before the Congress, the Legal Workforce Act, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, would require all employers to use a federal database called E-Verify to check the legitimacy of those numbers and not hire illegal workers.
Smith said his program would "provide growers who want to do the right thing with a reliable source of legal labor" and would also "protect the livelihoods of American workers and the rights of guest workers."
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