The House of Representatives on May 11 passed a
hefty immigration package
. It is being
hailed
by some conservatives as “the best immigration enforcement bill to ever pass a chamber of the U.S Congress.” However, the bill seeks to strengthen an old, flawed policy proposal.
Among the provisions in the legislation is a mandate for the implementation of E-Verify. This program enables employers to confirm the legal status of potential hires. Despite longtime support from
immigration
hawks, this program is deeply flawed. Moreover, a national mandate would require a federal database and threaten the basic freedoms of millions of legal workers.
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At the heart of E-Verify is the creation of a national database with sensitive and personal information. The federal government has long struggled with protecting the privacy of Americans, as evidenced by
Internal Revenue Service
leaks and the high-profile hacks of personal information at the
Department of Transportation
and
Office of Personnel Management
.
Another problem is that E-Verify errs at a far higher rate than its advocates admit. Job applicants are able to fool it routinely in a variety of ways. In fiscal 2018, the system
failed to block
roughly 84% of non-qualified hires. Likewise, in the preceding decade, E-Verify let slip four-fifths of illegal hires. “The number of illegal hires E‑Verify has prevented grew threefold since 2006,” David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute,
wrote
in 2019, “but the number of illegal hires E‑Verify allowed shot up 348‐fold.”
Further, from 2005 to 2019, E-Verify
erroneously delayed
about 760,000 legal hirings, from which 180,000 or more would-be employees completely lost employment. The error rate plummeted from 1.9% (fiscal 2006) to 0.2% (fiscal 2019). The latter figure could seem statistically insignificant. In absolute terms, however, assuming a 0.2% error rate, 100% implementation of E-Verify by employers nationwide could flag erroneously as many as 200,000 legal workers each year.
For those states that mandated its use, the program has floundered. For example, Arizona has required universal E-Verify use in hiring since 2008. “It was the great hope that never was,”
said
former state Sen. Rich Crandall, a Republican. “It was promised as the silver bullet to immigration problems.” But in 2015, the program managed to bar just 1,346 hires from work, just
0.1
% of total screenings. In comparison, illegal immigrants made up 4.03% of Arizona’s population that same year.
The program fails largely because employers flout E-Verify mandates and state authorities lack either the will or means to enforce them. Between 2008 and 2016, one-third of Arizonan hires
dodged
the state’s order. Similarly, mandates in Alabama, South Carolina, and Mississippi have been met with
compliance rates
below 60% or even 50%. This is because of the costly compliance burdens E-Verify imposes. “The [currently mandated] I9 form costs employers an estimated
13.48 million man‐hours
each year,” Cato’s Alex Nowrasteh notes. “A national E-Verify mandate would add to that – perhaps substantially.”
Nonetheless, despite E-Verify’s impotence, its grip on the imagination of many remains firm. Many policymakers who support it surely act with good faith and bad facts. For others, however, E-Verify’s very ineffectiveness provides “the political benefits of being an immigration restrictionist without forcing their districts to pay a heavy economic cost,” as Nowrasteh
surmises
.
His analysis seems prescient. With seconds remaining on the legislative shot clock, GOP leaders
amended
the current immigration package
to shield
the agriculture industry from “any adverse impact” caused by E-Verify. In short, the provision seeks to compound the ineffectiveness of the program by sheltering from it the very industry with the
greatest share
of unauthorized workers. Of hired crop farmworkers, for instance, unauthorized workers comprise roughly 40%,
according to
the Department of Agriculture.
To fortify this porousness, the bill would establish two nebulous “authentication … verification” pilot programs, “each using a separate and distinct technology.” The nature of such “technolog[ies]” remains unclear. “What is it? Fingerprints? DNA? Retina? Why not just say it in the bill? Is E-Verify actually Patriot Act 2.0?” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
tweeted
. Massie challenged his colleagues on whether an individual’s ability to work should be preconditioned on an invasive, data-intensive federal approval process.
Those persuaded by politicians’ case-by-case arguments for federally administered identity verification regimes should consider the broader implications. Such a program presents threats to personal liberty by requiring the permission of error-prone, federally-monitored programs simply to engage in such basic activities as work or
speech
. A verification mandate here, and a verification mandate there, and the United States begins to resemble unfree countries worldwide. Benjamin Franklin
wrote
it best: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
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David B. McGarry is a policy analyst at the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.
