E-Verify use ebbs despite undocumented hiring
In President Donald Trump’s many vocal pronouncements about stopping illegal immigration, one solution he promoted during the campaign has been conspicuously missing: a requirement that employers check whether workers are legal.
Eight states require nearly all employers to use the federal government’s online “E-Verify” tool to check whether new hires are eligible to work in the U.S., but efforts to expand the mandate to all states have stalled, despite polls showing widespread support and studies showing it reduces unauthorized workers.
The campaign for a national mandate has withered amid what appears to be a more pressing problem — a historic labor shortage that has businesses across the country desperate for workers, at restaurants, farms and in other lowwage jobs.
The urgency around that shortage was clear at a congressional hearing earlier this month when senators pressed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on additional visas for seasonal foreign workers.
“There’s not one manufacturing plant in Wisconsin, not one dairy farm, not one resort that can hire enough people,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
With the unemployment rate at a 17-year low and a Trump administration crackdown on foreign workers, lawmakers are reluctant to champion legislation that could exacerbate the labor shortage and hurt business constituents. Despite his administration’s “Hire American” rhetoric, Trump and the GOP leadership have gone quiet on mandating E-Verify.
“Allowing businesses to employ people illegally is like the government leaving the keys in an unlocked car,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, an organization that has campaigned for a national E-Verify mandate since 1996. “You’re going to get a lot of stolen cars.”
E-Verify has proved effective at keeping immigrants who are in the country illegally from taking American jobs. In Arizona, which pioneered the mandatory checks in 2008, the number of unauthorized workers dropped 33 percent below what was projected without the requirement, according to a 2017 analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
The federal employment verification system, introduced more than 20 years ago, has wide public support. Nearly 80 percent of those surveyed last fall by The Washington Post and ABC News support requiring employers to verify new hires are legally living in the United States — more than double the support for building a wall along the Mexican border.
Trump touted a national E-Verify mandate while running for president. “We will ensure that E-Verify is used to the fullest extent possible under existing law, and we will work with Congress to strengthen and expand its use across the country,” Trump declared in a 2016 speech in Arizona.
Trump last October listed E-Verify among his immigration priorities, and in February, herequested $23 million in his 2019 budget proposal to expand the program for mandatory nationwide use. But Trump has yet to use the platform of the presidency to rally support for a national requirement.
The labor shortage in industries that most depend upon undocumented workers — such as agriculture, construction and hospitality — is driving up wages and deterring state authorities from rigorous enforcement of state E-Verify laws, factors that analysts say complicate any national campaign.
Eight states require nearly all employers to use the system: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah.