House Judiciary Committee Approves Mandatory E-Verify Legislation

In an effort to turn off the jobs magnet that attracts most illegal aliens to the United States, the House Judiciary Committee approved the Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 3711) last week by a 20-10 vote. (Judiciary Committee Press Release, Oct. 25, 2017) The FAIR-supported bill, introduced by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), and Congressman Ken Calvert (R-CA), requires U.S. employers to check the work eligibility of all future hires through the E-Verify system. (Id.)

Congressman Smith applauded last week’s Committee approval, underscoring why the bill is so important for American workers. (Id.) “The Legal Workforce Act saves jobs for American workers at a time when nearly 20 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed,” Smith said. (Id.) “By expanding the E-Verify system to all U.S. employers, employers will check the work authorization of new employees to ensure that the jobs only go to Americans and legal workers.” (Id.)

Created in 1996 and operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), E-Verify checks the social security numbers of newly hired employees against Social Security Administration (SSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) records to help ensure that they are genuinely eligible to work in the U.S. (Id.) The program quickly confirms nearly 99% of work-eligible employees and takes less than two minutes to use. (Id.) Over 740,000 American employers currently use E-Verify and a whopping 83% of America’s employers support a mandatory electronic verification system. (Id.)

A detailed summary of the Legal Workforce Act can be found here.