Business coalition for immigration reform says members receive disturbing comments

Members of a new business group advocating immigration reform have been subjected to personal attacks and racist comments since announcing last month that they would advocate reforms to help secure an adequate labor supply, according to a lobbyist for the group.

Brent Olmstead of the Idaho Business Coalition for Immigration told the House Agriculture Committee on Monday that the group’s members have received disturbing feedback since announcing its aims on newspaper opinion pages across the state.

“Most of these letters and e-mails have ignored the issue of immigrant labor and instead have been based in personal insults and racist comments,” Olmstead said. “In response, the coalition promises to stick to the issue and what can be done to improve the availability of labor for Idaho’s employers.”

The coalition includes the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, agriculture groups, food processors and contractors.

Olmstead said some people have criticized the group for seeking “cheap slave labor.”

He said Idaho agriculture pays more than the minimum wage. Irrigators make more than $8 an hour, and the fast-growing dairy industry pays $10 to $14 an hour, he said. “These are good paying jobs in rural Idaho, and they often come with benefits,” he said.

Olmstead said his group opposes making mandatory the federal “E-verify” program, as some states have. E-Verify is an Internet-based system operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Free to employers, it links to federal databases to help them determine employment eligibility of new hires and the validity of their Social Security numbers.

That system is time-consuming and unreliable, Olmstead said. The government claims an error rate of 3 percent, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce puts the error rate at 13 percent, he said.

Olmstead countered claims that illegal immigrants enjoy U.S. welfare benefits; he said law bars such benefits. Only emergency medical care and K-12 education are available to undocumented workers and their families, he said.

Two farmers on the committee, Rep. Jim Patrick, R-Twin Falls, and Rep. Bert Stevenson, R-Rupert, had supportive words for the coalition’s work.

“During the potato harvest and beet harvest, you cannot find enough truck drivers that have a license and can pass the drug test,” Stevenson said. “We have a very serious problem, and I don’t know how we’re going to address it.”

Stevenson said domestic laborers are often not willing work more than eight hours a day, which does not meet the needs of farmers during harvest for 10- or 12-hour shifts.