HispanicBusiness

The Senate passed today a $838 billion stimulus plan that did not include E-Verify, a mechanism to check whether workers are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens. While Senate Democrats blocked the E-Verify amendment from being voted on, the House has voted 417-2 in favor of including the worker identity checking program in its version of the stimulus package.

The fight over E-Verify, or Basic Pilot, now moves to the House-Senate conference where the differences between the two economic recovery packages will be hammered out in negotiations. Proponents and opponents of the E-Verify measure have targeted the legislative negotiations as a key battleground over the issue.

Proponents of E-Verify say the measure is necessary to prevent newly created jobs from going to undocumented immigrant worker in the United States. The House bill prohibits any stimulus funding from going to a company or government office that fails to use the E-Verify identity checking system. This online electronic database checks whether a person is authorized to work in the United States.

A number of groups including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Human Resource Initiative for a Legal Workforce, opposed the insertion of an E-Verify Measure into the bill. The Hispanic Caucus sent a letter on Jan. 26 to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arguing against the measure. The caucus wrote that E-Verify would "disproportionately affect Hispanic workers and their employers . We urge you to ensure this provision is stripped from legislation."

The caucus argued that the database used to confirm the worker's status "has been widely documented as unreliable and inaccurate." They said that mistakes in the database could "result in 3.6 million workers a year being misidentified" as not authorized for employment.

In addition, "Foreign-born American citizens are 30 times more likely than native born workers to be incorrectly identified as ineligible for work."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce too has consistently opposed a mandatory E-Verify program. In a press release, the chamber stated that "Given the current economy, now is not the time to add more bureaucracy and billions of dollars in compliance costs to America's businesses." Randy Johnson, the chamber's vice president on immigrant and labor issues, said, "The Chamber supports legislative initiatives to develop and implement an electronic verification system, but first we must be sure that the system is effective, efficient, and manageable under real-world conditions."

In contrast, Federation for American Immigration Reform strongly argued for including E-Verify in the final bill. Dan Stein, FAIR's president yesterday wrote: "With millions losing jobs, it would be immoral for Senate leaders to neglect vital protections for U.S. workers." He added, "When spending nearly one trillion dollars of taxpayers' money to reinvigorate the economy, the American people expect programs such as E-Verify be not only included but made mandatory."