E-Verify best jobs bill

Last week, President Obama gave yet another job creation speech that was aimed at protecting one job—his own.  Two months after President Obama took office, the number of unemployed Americans eclipsed 13 million for the first time in history.  Now, two years after he took office, nearly 14 million Americans are unemployed and another nine million can’t find full-time work.  President Obama has a right to be concerned about his job.

But if President Obama is indeed focused on putting 23 million unemployed or underemployed Americans back to work, there is one element that is missing from his jobs plan: a federal E-Verify requirement.   This is one of the best options available to put unemployed Americans back to work.

E-Verify is a web-based program that quickly identifies individuals working illegally in the United States and protects jobs for legal workers by checking the Social Security numbers of new hires. We could open up millions of jobs for unemployed Americans by requiring all U.S. employers to use E-Verify. 

The “E” in E-Verify could just as well stand for “easy” and “effective.”  It takes only one to two minutes to use per new hire and immediately confirms 99.5 percent of work-eligible employees.  Even though E-Verify is not mandatory, many businesses voluntarily use the program.  Nearly 290,000 American employers use E-Verify and an average of 1,300 new businesses sign up each week. 

Part of the success of E-Verify is that participating employers are happy with the results since it provides American employers who want to do the right thing with an easy way to do so.  Outside evaluations have found that the vast majority of employers using E-Verify believe it to be an effective and reliable tool for checking the legal status of their employees. 

 E-Verify recently received an exceptionally high overall customer satisfaction score – 82 out of 100 on the American Customer Satisfaction Index scale.  That is well above the overall federal government’s score of 69.

The public also supports E-Verify. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 82 percent of likely voters think businesses should be required to use E-Verify to determine if a new employee is in the country legally. 

The need for a federal E-Verify law is more crucial than ever.  Seven million illegal immigrants work in the United States in jobs that should be available to unemployed Americans. 

The unemployment rate among Americans without a high school diploma is 14.3 percent. Minorities have also been particularly hard-hit by the recession. The unemployment rate among African Americans is 16.7 percent and among Hispanics it’s 11.3 percent, both significantly higher than the national rate.

A federal E-Verify law could open up job opportunities for these unemployed Americans while eliminating the jobs magnet that draws millions of illegal workers to the U.S. 

During President Obama’s jobs speech before Congress last week, he said: “The next election is 14 months away.  And the people who sent us here—the people who hired us to work for them—they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.”  The President is right—unemployed Americans don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months.  But it’s time for his actions to speak louder than his words.  Americans don’t need another speech; they need jobs.  Congress should pass and the President should support a federal E-Verify bill.   

Smith is the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.