http://immigrationimpact.

com/2011/06/07/why-making-e-verify-mandatorydoesn%E2%80%99t-solve-anything/ As the national debate over E-Verify continues to heat up, some members of Congress seem intent on pushing for mass deportation strategies without taking into account the harm they will cause for American businesses and workers, and without acknowledging that making EVerify mandatory will not resolve any underlying problems. House Judiciary Committee Chair Rep. Lamar Smith intends to introduce legislation in the next few weeks that will make E-Verifythe electronic verification program which allows employers to attempt to verify the work authorization of newly hired employeesmandatory for all employers across the U.S. Smith has been using a recent Supreme Court decision as a reason to expand E-Verify. Arizona was the first state to make E-Verify mandatory for all businesses in the state. That law was challenged on grounds that it conflicted with federal law, and the case eventually went to the Supreme Court. Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that Arizonas law was not preempted by federal law, and mandatory E-Verify could move forward. This will no doubt encourage additional states to make the system mandatory. E-Verify is largely voluntary program at present. Federal contractors, however, must use it, and at least fourteen states have made it mandatory for all or some of state businesses. Its important to remember, however, that the Supreme Court decision did not make mandatory E-Verify a good idea. In fact, Arizona has experience problems since passing their law; workers are moving underground, tax revenues are down, American workers are losing their jobs, and small businesses pay the price. The federal government itself admitted that E-Verify cannot detect all unauthorized workers. Errors and employer misuse of E-Verify mean that tens of thousands of U.S. citizens and legal workers could be denied their jobs and their paychecks. And it would mean less tax revenue for U.S. coffers as immigrant workers move to the underground economy. As mandatory E-Verify has come up in state legislators, business groupsparticularly the agricultural industryhave opposed the measures. Few American workers take agricultural jobs, and growers complain that the H-2A visa program for agricultural workers is complex and not well suited to their needs. As a result, experts believe as many as three-fourths of the countrys agricultural workers are unauthorized workers. Growers fear that mandatory EVerifyif implemented without a legalization program or a reformed H-2A programcould bring the U.S. agricultural industry to its knees. Small business is also rightly concerned about mandatory E-Verify because it would impose new regulations on them at a time when they are already struggling. According to Bloomberg News Service, making E-Verify mandatory would cost $2.7 billion a year. The biggest burden would be on small businesses (those with less than 500 workers), which account for 99.7% of employers. Small businesses would have to pay $2.6 billion a year.

Thus, it appears that advocates are going to expend much time and energy fighting yet another enforcement-only program thatabsent legalization and other reformsdoes nothing to fix our broken immigration system but has extremely negative consequences for law abiding employers and U.S. workers. Photo by USCIS.gov. http://americasvoiceonline.org/page/content/e-verify/ Two of the masterminds behind the GOP's mass deportation (of immigrants) strategy, Representatives Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and Elton Gallegly (R-CA), chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, are introducing new legislation intended to bring about their extremist fantasy: the expulsion of 11 million undocumented immigrants and their families. That's what their whole "enforcement only" approach is all about - tighten the screws on immigrant families while blocking any hope of being able to legalize their status. The Republicans dark vision for immigration reform isnt playing well with Latino voters. But in addition to alienating Latinos, Smith and Gallegly are on a path that will also hurt U.S. workers and key industries -- like agriculture -- by forcing all employers to use the flawed EVerify system when evaluating whether an employee is legal to work. In a recent op-ed, the duo tries to sell E-Verify as a "successful tool for employers." With a fail rate of 50%, E-Verify is anything but successful. We all want to crack down on unscrupulous employers who take advantage of workers, but that's not what E-Verify does. Instead, E-Verify will give bad employers even more control over desperate workers who move off the books and into the cash economy, reducing tax revenue and expanding the exploitation of workers. The consequences of mandatory E-Verify arent limited to immigrant workers. The Smith/Gallegly E-Verify plan would cause almost 800,000 Americans to lose their jobs due to errors in the government databases; force an additional 4 million legal workers into an administrative quagmire; create an undue burden on small businesses; nearly wipe out the agricultural workforce; and result in loss of tax revenue, increasing the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded that mandatory, nationwide E-Verify would cost us $17.3 billion over 10 years because it would increase the number of undocumented workers being paid outside the tax system. Just implementing the program, according to the CBO, would cost $23 billion over ten years. Mandatory E-Verify would also have a devastating impact on industries that rely on immigrant labor, like agriculture. By cracking down on immigrant farm workers, Smith and Galleglys vision would lead to the exportation of farms and jobs and the increased importation of food from foreign sources. The loss of on-farm jobs would also have a domino effect: 3.2 million non-agriculture jobs depend on the agriculture industry.

All these problems, and the program only identifies undocumented workers 50% of the time. Despite all this, there is a real possibility that some version of E-Verify will advance, especially in the House of Representatives. The Smith/Gallegly strategy is to ignore the faults and cost of the system, its impact on the economy, and its burden on U.S. workersand insist that E-Verify will "free up" jobs and force undocumented immigrants to "deport themselves." The reality is that most undocumented immigrants will remain here, even more in the shadows of the underground economy, subject to exploitation and reduced labor standards that impact everyone. What's frustrating is that there's a better solution staring Smith and Gallegly right in the face. Comprehensive immigration reform, which would combine border and workplace enforcement with a program to require undocumented immigrants to register for legal status, would raise wages and labor standards for all workers, boost tax revenues, and gut the underground economy. This is a fiscally responsible solutionand a practical alternative to the SmithGallegly mass deportation fantasy. Whats more, a majority of Americans support it. The Smith-Gallegly plan will only make a bad situation worse. Throughout the summer, we will be pointing out that Smith and Gallegly are wrong on the politics and wrong on the facts. We will also be pointing out their rank hypocrisy. House Republicans benefit from immigrant labor every time they eat a Georgia peach, go to a restaurant, leave their children with the nanny, or build an addition onto their homes. Undocumented immigrants are present in every state, in every sector of the economy. Its time that Republicans in Congress admit this simple fact, and support a plan that gives immigrants the respect they deserve and enacts a real solution for taxpayers and workers.

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/06/137008072/illegal-immigration-focus-switches-to-employers http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/ircaempverif/Westat-E-Verify-report-2009-12-16.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-sharry/the-truth-about-everify_b_865649.html