Springfield E-Verify

I attended the League of Women Voters forum on the E-verify ordinance we'll be voting on next Tuesday. The evening began with the City Council explaining the petition process and then the City Legal Adviser who explained that the ordinance will probably be overturned in Missouri courts.
The debate was mostly over what degree of pointless the bill will be since it is unenforceable and as far as anyone can tell illegal immigration is not really a problem in Springfield.
The event was pretty information light. But I did walk away with a with some new thoughts on the subject of this ordinance:
*The bill seems to try to try and bypass due process- issuing a 20 day suspension of business licence on the first offence. My understanding is that is automatic not upon being found guilty.
*As I said above the Missouri Supreme court is likely to favor challenges. This may result in the city being sued for 20 days of lost earnings...
*In opening statements the supporters said that the ordinance wouldn't cost anything to tax payers, but later admitted giving the financial department more responsibility does have a cost. To me this is the crux of the argument because it will cost the city money with little possibility of having results.
*The representative from the minutemen repeatedly described illegal immigration as insidious. But what seems more insidious to me is forcing business owners sign oaths to participate with a program that doesn't work (e-verify has a history of false positives). Maybe I was reading a little too much between the lines but some of what was said reminded me of The Red Scare.
*The real winners of this bill would be neighboring cities. The biggest employers in Springfield are call centers. Call centers have a high turnover rate. Forcing them to do more paperwork can be very expensive in the long run.
*At one point it was brought up that E-verify could take several weeks to process someone. Waiting a few weeks to start a job is annoying and when you're scraping by it's frightening.
*The problem would be better addressed by cracking down on identity theft not illegal immigrants.
*Both sides agree that the proposed ordinance needs to be fixed, but the supporters would rather have a bad law passed than start over. Remember both sides agree that this isn't an urgent problem in Springfield, though supporters insist it's worst than anyone thinks.