Will President Biden’s administration fix the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border? That’s unclear, but his support for a pathway to citizenship (and driver’s licenses) for illegal immigrants is not promising.
Thankfully, however, states can take actions of their own to oppose illegal immigration. One of those is mandating that all employers in the public and private sector use E-Verify, an online service run by the Department of Homeland Security, to ensure that their hires can legally work in the United States. It’s not a perfect system, but it improves the situation and is something many red states could implement.
So far, only eight states have mandatory E-Verify in place in the private sector. However, with 23 Republican trifectas in state government and three states with Democratic governors but Republican supermajorities in legislature, there is plenty of opportunity across the country to make it happen.
Since a major incentive driving people to come to the U.S. illegally is work, eliminating those opportunities is a way for states to cut back on their illegal immigration.
The most common way that illegal immigrants enter the country is not through an illegal border crossing, but visa overstays. So while physical barriers between the U.S. and Mexico can help border security deter some illegal immigration, there have to be ways to do the same for people who are already in the country.
E-Verify touts itself as more than 97% effective when it comes to correctly identifying if people can work in the U.S. legally or not, and it notes that it can correct mistakes if there is an error. While the libertarian Cato Institute is skeptical of the service, it says the technology stopped about 3 million illegal hires between 2006 and 2018. It says that’s only 20% of attempted illegal immigrant hires during that time. Still, that’s an improvement over what would happen if only a handful of businesses voluntarily used the service.
Critics also argue that illegal immigrants can commit identity fraud and work their way around the E-Verify system. However, the idea that people who broke the law to enter the country will break more laws if we don’t let them break the law is no reason to end such a program.
Additionally, because many people present a driver’s license as a form of identification to their prospective employers, the continued implementation of REAL ID may make E-Verify more effective. Driver’s licenses obtained by illegal immigrants are not REAL ID compliant, and REAL ID is more difficult to forge than the standard driver’s license.
There is no easy fix to the immigration system, but if states care about the rule of law and don’t want weak borders, then they should do what they can to help the federal government enforce the law. E-Verify can help.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
