House Subcommittee Hears Testimony to Mandate E-Verify

What is the role of the American worker in 2011?  The expectation for workers and their employers has changed a lot since Emma Lazarus’s words were inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Nowadays, the role of immigrant and migrant workers is constantly in question.

Every law that is debated in Congress must be considered how it will affect undocumented workers and their employers.

Today the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement will hear testimony on a Republican proposal to permanently mandate use of the E-Verify employment verification system.

E-Verify is an internet-based, free program that compares information from an employee’s I-9 form to data from U.S. government records.  If the information matches, that employee is eligible to work in the United States.

Critics of the proposal claim that this mandate will have horrible effects on immigrants, the U.S. economy, and American tax-payers.  Among the critics is the labor union, SEIU.

SEIU International Secretary-Treasurer Eliseo Medina issued the following statement:

“Mandatory E-Verify is the wrong solution at the wrong time. Unless E-Verify is part of broader, more comprehensive immigration reforms that restores fairness to our economy by ending illegal immigration, this job-killing bill would undermine economic recovery, waste billions of taxpayer dollars, and actually expand the underground economy.”

Intensely involved in the hiring practices of American companies, recruiters may wish to analyze this proposed mandate and hypothesize about what its effects would be. Staffing firms and high volume recruitment and employment firms may also be effected by new mandates.