U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president of labor, immigration and employee benefits Randel Johnson; North Carolina State University international employment manager Jill Blitstein; National Restaurant Association senior vice president Angelo Amador and National Council of Farmer Cooperatives Chuck Conner speak about the benefits and costs of mandating E-Verify nationwide in Washington. (Yunita Ong/ MNS)
WASHINGTON – House Republicans and Democrats butted heads on Wednesday over a GOP attempt to make electronic verification of the immigration status of new hires mandatory under federal law.
Currently, five states require all businesses to use E-Verify, but the Department of Homeland Security program has come under criticism. Small business owners say the program limits their hires and is cumbersome to use, while others have criticized it as error-prone.
“We need to do all we can to protect the jobs of Americans,” said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who introduced the bill. “The program is free, quick and easy to use.”
The mandate on E-Verify, part of the proposed Legal Workforce Act, is just the latest Republican salvo against President Barack Obama’s attempts to loosen immigration restrictions in the country.
“The Legal Workforce Act empowers states to help enforce the law and ensures we don’t allow the president to continue with his lax immigration enforcement,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He was speaking at a hearing of the committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security.
The federal government launched E-Verify in 1996 as a pilot program to screen workers’ immigration status. Federal employers are required to use the system. Five states – Arizona, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Utah have made E-Verify mandatory for all businesses.
The federal government launched E-Verify in 1996 as a pilot program. It compares information like name and Social Security number of new hires against Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records.
Nearly 575,000 employers now participate in E-Verify, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data.
Extending and mandating the use of E-Verify is a familiar issue to the House Judiciary Committee – it has held six meetings on the issue in the past four years, said Rep. John Conyers, D.-Mich.
Conyers said: “Each time I have said that E-Verify is an important tool but… E-Verify cannot be made mandatory without immigration system reform.”
He also attacked the Republican line of argument that E-Verify protects American jobs from undocumented immigrants. “Immigrants often fill gaps in workforce when there are not enough Americans,” he said.
Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-Texas, also agreed on the importance of E-Verify but said it “needs to be used in right time and right way,” warning of the potential for discrimination in hiring.
E-Verify has come under fire by business leaders, many of whom say that the system disproportionately burdens small businesses and is error-prone.
According to a 2011 Bloomberg Government report, mandating E-Verify nationwide would cost $2.7 billion, with small businesses bearing most of the load. Moreover, a 2009 study commissioned by the government found that 54 percent of unauthorized workers screened between April and June 2008 passed the screening because the system did not detect cases of identity fraud.
“Any mandatory E-Verify requirements must have reasonable penalties, contain swift error correction mechanisms and compensate individuals and small businesses for out-of-pocket losses sustained due to database errors,” a representative of the National Small Business Association said in an interview.
Last year, Senate passed a bill giving the Department of Homeland Security four years to improve E-Verify and implement it across the nation.
Business leaders testifying at the hearing were concerned with the practical implementation of the system. A mandatory E-Verify requirement would exacerbate the agricultural workforce crisis, said Chuck Conner, president of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives.
“Hiring often occurs in remote rural areas with limited internet access,” Conner said. “Job offers are often made field side in crews, not with an individual application process and access to web-based programs.
Jill G. Blitstein has used E-Verify as international employment manager at North Carolina State University. During the hearing, she said the Legal Workforce Act would “reduce number of documents needed and ensure faster and easier compliance.” However, she criticized as unrealistic the legislation’s requirement that all employers re-verify existing employees within six months after enactment.
The immigration debate has popped up this week throughout Washington. On Wednesday, the president met with DREAMers at the White House, a day after Senate Democrats blocked a bill that would have overturned his plan to allow up to 5 million undocumented immigrants to live and work here.
