02/21/2025
REMEMBER 1986!!!
The Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 251) is now a bi-partisan bill thanks to Rep. Ed Case (D-HI) who has signed on as a co-sponsor. Bill titles are often deceptive, but in the case of the Legal Workforce Act, there’s truth in advertising. H.R. 251 would ensure that employers use E-Verify to confirm they are hiring legal workers. If you’re thinking “wait, that’s not the law already,” you’re not alone
(See Enforcement Challenges: It’s illegal to hire an unauthorized worker…but legal to never verify that authorization.)
Congress didn’t make it illegal to hire an unauthorized worker until 1986 as part of a compromise that included amnesty for over 3 million people who had violated immigration laws. The amnesty went into effect, but the promised workplace enforcement never came. In 1991, the Senate considered a repeal of even the weak workplace enforcement that was on the books but they backed down after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s widow, Corretta Scott King, led a coalition of Black leaders who lobbied to keep employer sanctions on the books.
Coretta Scott King Quote
A few years after that, another Civil Rights icon, Barbara Jordan, called on Congress to pass a law that would utilize modern internet technology to verify the information that new hires submit on the paper I-9 form.
"Employment continues to be the principal magnet attracting illegal aliens to this country,” Jordan said. “As long as U.S. businesses benefit from the hiring of unauthorized workers, control of unlawful immigration will be impossible." In other words…
You can’t secure the border if you don’t secure the workplace.
Based on Jordan’s recommendation, Congress started what became known as E-Verify, an online system that verifies the work authorization of new hires within minutes. But Congress fell short of fulfilling the promise of workplace enforcement by making E-Verify voluntary. In other words…
Congress determined that it’s illegal to hire an unauthorized worker, but you don’t have to check (or “trust, but don’t verify”).
To be clear, E-Verify works, and thanks to a patchwork of state laws, President Obama’s regulation for federal contractors, and employers who just want to do the right thing, roughly 50 million new hires are run through E-Verify every year.
“There’s a lot of attention on deportations right now, but don’t undersell the importance of passing laws that will endure regardless of future leadership and administrations. Some states have stepped in already and taken strong action. For instance, requiring E-Verify for all new hires is the single most effective way to combat illegal presence in a state. In fact, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that states that passed laws requiring E-Verify saw up to an 83% reduction in illegal presence.” - Andrew Good, Director State Government Relations
E-Veirify Map
Reality Check: Congress has been indifferent to illegal hiring for decades.
Oh, there is bi-partisan consensus that there is no credible immigration policy without E-Verify and workplace enforcement.
“Without effective verification, there can be no effective enforcement of the borders,” the New York TImes editorial board wrote in 1982.
"We have the technology to implement a reliable system that tells employers whether they're hiring an illegal worker,” said Jared Bernstein, economic adviser to Vice-President Biden. “What we have lacked thus far is the political guts to mete out serious punishment to those employers who ignore the law."
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has acknowledged that "a biometric-based employer verification system with tough enforcement and auditing is necessary to significantly diminish the job magnet that attracts illegal aliens to the United States."
And Christopher Landau, President Trump’s ambassador to Mexico during his first administration, said:
"Unless there is a serious effort, through mandatory E-Verify and other relatively simple means, to ensure that persons hired to work in the United States are eligible to do so, our country will continue to entice unauthorized immigrants and reward unauthorized immigration."
And yet despite the broad consensus on the subject spanning decades and pre-dating Barbara Jordan’s recommendation, Congress still hasn’t passed a law. A dozen years ago, 78 members of the House of Representatives co-sponsored a mandatory E-Verify bill on a bipartisan basis. So far this year? Five. Here are the champions co-sponsoring Rep. Ken Calvert’s (R-CA) bill:
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA)
Rep. Ed Case (D-HI)
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ)
Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO)
Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-SC)
We have work to do. If your Representative is one of the five supporting Rep. Calvert’s Legal Workforce Act, cheers. There may be no better litmus test to determine who is really serious about immigration enforcement than support for E-Verify.
For everyone else, keep contacting your representative’s office, Monday-Friday:
Capitol Hill Switchboard: (202) 224-3121.
Ask to be connected to your representative’s office.
Tell the staffer you’d like your Rep. to co-sponsor H.R. 251, the Legal Workforce Act.
If your representative is a Republican, remind them that E-Verify is necessary to fulfill President Trump’s pledge to repair the illegal influx that occurred during the Biden administration.
For those of you with a Democratic representative, remember that Democrats like Ed Case were once pretty common within the party, and that it was Democratic icon Barbara Jordan who first championed what is now known as “E-Verify.”
“E-Verify should be the easiest thing for Democrats,” says NumbersUSA co-CEO Roy Beck, “because it essentially puts the blame for illegal immigration on the outlaw businesses and attempts to stop them from avoiding hiring American workers.”
