The Florida House Tuesday ejected the E-Verify bill adopted by the Senate Monday and replaced it with its own employee verification bill, setting the stage for a late-session showdown between the chambers.
Rep. Cord Byrd, R-Neptune Beach, in a strike-all amendment, replaced Senate Bill 664 – adopted in a 22-18 vote by the Senate – with language from his employee-verification measure, House Bill 1265.
The House advanced the amended measure to a third reading Wednesday. If approved, the bill will be returned to the Senate with only days left in the legislative session.
SB 664, sponsored by Sen. Tom Lee, R-Thonotosassa, requires all employers with at least 50 workers to use E-Verify “or a substantially equivalent system” to confirm new hires are authorized to work in the U.S.
Employers with less than 50 workers must verify eligibility of new hires by using Form I-9, as required under current law, but must retain copies of verification documents for at least three years.
Lee’s SB 664 would require the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO) to audit companies to ensure compliance with the law and would allow individuals to report businesses they suspect of hiring unauthorized workers.
Byrd’s amendment removes SB 664’s DEO enforcement provisions and allows more alternative methods to verify employees’ work status.
Byrd said his bill – the first worker-verification measure to ever pass a House committee – has remained unchanged in its transit through three hearings to get onto the chamber’s floor.
“We’ve been very consistent all along the way where the Senate was changing at every step,” he said.
Lee’s bill has seen dramatic revisions while matriculating through Senate committees. At one point, the measure had an “agricultural cut-out” that was later removed.
However, the former Senate president told fellow senators Monday that the details in his bill had been cleared with Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office.
Adopting an E-Verify bill is a priority for DeSantis and state Republican chair Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, in tandem with President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented aliens.
But the employment-verification measures are both vigorously opposed by Republican-aligned interests, including the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association (FFVA), tourism, industry and retail interests.
The American Business Immigration Coalition’s (ABIC) Immigration Partnership & Coalition (IMPAC) Fund offered statements against both measures from a range of opponents, including from Florida GOP Chair Al Cárdenas, MBF Healthcare Partners Chair Mike Fernández, former Carnival Cruise Lines CEO Bob Dickinson, DiMare Fresh CEO Paul “Mr. Tomato” DiMare and other state business leaders.
“While we welcome the amendment filed in the House that removes the most egregious provisions from the senate proposal, ABIC and IMPAC Fund remain opposed to any version of mandatory E-Verify in Florida, especially while our state is in the midst of a public health emergency with the spread of coronavirus,” ABIC Director of Communications Alia El-Assar said in a statement. “Real immigration solutions must occur at the federal level by providing lawful status to people who have made lives in our country and contributed to our communities.”
Reps. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, and Cindy Polo, D-Hialeah, submitted a failed amendment seeking to do just that – condition E-Verify approval on federal comprehensive immigration reform, require an economic impact study and dropping references to “unauthorized aliens” in the measure.
