President Barack Obama pushed back his immigration reform agenda until 2010, but a little-known initiative requiring employers to verify the legal status of their workers may ignite a political powder keg.
The E-Verify system was established as a pilot program in 1997 to allow employers to quickly check the immigration status of prospective workers against federal databases. It is now a Web-based system that checks the identities of perhaps 10 percent of all new hires and is mandatory for all federal contractors.
With unemployment continuing to rise, many lawmakers are backing an expansion of the program in an effort to reduce competition from low-wage, illegal immigrants. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., has championed E-Verify as a way to have “American jobs going to American workers” and is leading the charge to require all major employers to use the system. The bill, known as the Secure America Through Verification and Enforcement Act, was killed in committee last year, but has returned with more support.
Shuler’s bill is set to come up for a vote not long after Congress returns to work next month, and support is growing on both sides of the aisle. But groups like La Raza and the American Civil Liberties Union, which support amnesty for illegal immigrants in the U.S., oppose the bill on the grounds of it being used to identify and deport immigrants. And some in the business community are lobbying hard to keep what they say will destroy, not create, jobs by making hiring more difficult.
“The government is not running an immigration system that works or makes economic sense,” said Raymond Keating, chief economist at the Small Business Entrepreneurship Council. “This is about the businesses that through no fault of their own might hire an illegal. Business should not be playing the role of immigration police.”
Supporters point to the fact that it is a free and relatively easy to use the Web-based system, which often provides tentative answers within minutes. But concern remains from a 2008 Congressional Budget Office report that said using the system would decrease tax and Social Security collections by almost $40 billion over 10 years. Currently, some employers hire illegal immigrants under false identities but still remit payroll taxes and withhold income taxes for them. The government gets the money even if the worker never sees the benefit or refund.
“Trying to impose this on top of a broken immigration system is not the answer,” said Michele Waslin, a senior analyst with the Immigration Policy Center, the research arm of an immigrants’ rights group. “It’s not a magic bullet; it sidesteps the issue of the unscrupulous employer who won’t use it.”
Waslin also argues that with an error rate of 3 percent to 13 percent and no good way to prevent illegal immigrants from stealing identities and Social Security numbers, the system is not ready for broader application.
But with a stagnant job market and a bipartisan backing, senior aides on Capitol Hill say Shuler’s bill has a chance of circumventing the regular committee process and being fast-tracked for a floor vote.
