Administration is not pushing E-Verify

U.S. labor shortages are high for low-wage jobs

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 low-wage jobs.

The urgency around that shortage was clear at a congressional hearing last week 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 — even one aimed at illegal workers that’s popular among a broad swath of Americans.

House Republicans are forging ahead with a debate over the future of young undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children, but the fate of an E-Verify provision remains in limbo.

Despite his administration’s “Hire American” rhetoric, Trump and the GOP leadership have gone quiet on mandating E-Verify, draining momentum from a top policy goal of grassroots Republicans.

“The president has been very weak on this subject. Even though he’s not pushing hard for it, and even though the Republican leadership has been really sluggish on this, the Republican Party as a whole is overwhelmingly for this,” said Roy Beck, president of NumbersUSA, an organization that has campaigned for a national E-Verify mandate since 1996 in its quest for reduced immigration.

“Allowing businesses to employ people illegally is like the government leaving the keys in an unlocked car,” Beck said. “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. Trump last October listed E-Verify among his immigration priorities and in February, requested $23 million in his 2019 budget proposal to expand the program for mandatory nationwide use.