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E-Verify: Banning Illegals from the Workplace or Trojan Horse?
E-Verify is in the news. What is this program about? And what kind of limits are imposed on this program?
E-Verify operates with speed and accuracy. E-Verify is the government’s only free, fast, online service of its kind that electronically confirms an employee’s information against millions of government records and provides results within as little as three to five seconds. To learn more about the verification process, visit the verification process page.
It is run by the US by Social Security Administration and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
The USCIS facilitates compliance with U.S. immigration law by providing E-Verify program support, user support, training and outreach, and developing innovative technological solutions in employment eligibility verification.
So that is the upbeat and pleasant explanation offered by the federal government. But critics of the program see a more dangerous scenario than that one.
The main question being asked is: Can it even possibly end up being a Trojan horse wielded by Biden or others, like California Gov. Newsom, that will deny a specific person or group of people the right to work?
As with many controversial subjects, the Brownstone Institute has weighed in on the issue. The most telling portion of that essay lies in these sentences:
Giving the government the power to treat hiring as a privilege that they must approve has all the potential of a central bank digital currency but for jobs.
You cannot hire her. She is an undesirable for her political views.
You cannot hire him. You are behind on your diversity requirements.
You cannot hire a new worker, inflation is too high.
You cannot hire at all. We don’t like you.
Gov DeSantis in Florida has already signed off on E-verify legislation. It is hard to know if you aren’t in Florida if this legislation will be the Trojan horse the Brownstone article warns of.
Or perhaps there are safeguards built into the Florida legislation such that it can only be involved with establishing the legitimacy of anyone wanting a job as far as the visa, green card and/or citizenship status.
Supposedly in Florida, it will only be applied to employers with more than 25 workers.
I don’t like that a major push allowing this new program might succeed without all the pro’s and con’s being fully discussed.
After all, the negative situations created by the enacting of the program by Fed law are “still unknown.” But once it is fully employed, there will be no turning back.
Like the recent mRNA vaccine issue rolled out amid media and “health expert” acclaim, is this to be another imposition on our society allowed only due to the new principle of “only time can tell?”
Should it end up having more devastating consequences than the hoopla over its inception, will the public soon enter the regime of E-verify only to find it a dark and nasty place, while the media continues to assure us that “all is well?”
Published in General
Massie’s one of the best. I’ll take his lead:
I think the difference between e-verify and CBDC is that it would be difficult to justify denying any particular individual the right to work. Unless things got seriously more totalitarian around here I’m confident that kind of individual-based restriction wouldn’t withstand legal challenge. Programable CBDC restrictions, however, would be applied against things and institutions … these don’t have explicitly enumerated Constitutional protections.
The process is the punishment. Imagine the costs to Joe P. Average having to take the government to court in order to work. Now consider that since Joe P. Average cannot work, he cannot afford to take the government to court. Win/Win for the government.
Massie is outstanding on this issue as well as so many other significant issues.
Ty for putting all his comments via twitter into the discussion.
Wouldn’t it depend on whether or not the government is aware of a particular citizen’s views or not?
That one AZ business woman was really slammed hard by Lois Lerner of the IRS mostly for just being a Republican.
I don’t like the idea that we would now have another agency program that could cut off our right to and ability to secure our employment.
Like the crisis that precipitated the Patriot Act, E-verify sounds at first like something that will protect law -abiding Americans and immigrants. That the crisis is caused by improper governance is telling. Even benign government interferences can one day be turned for nefarious purposes. When the government in power already has been known to track and persecute those who oppose its policies and activities, we should just say no from the get-go.
Of course, it’s a bit of a trap, because unless Republicans can really explain why they’d vote against it, Democrats are going to make it sound like Republicans just want to hire illegals.
When everyone knows it’s actually the Dims who want the illegals, especially for their votes.
How to know when there is a GOP majority in the House and Democrat president:
I think those are silly worries. We have existing law about hiring aliens, we should enforce it with teeth. One of the basic duties Federal government is managing borders. Masse is wrong. Brownstone is wrong.
Tim Pool’s take on it.
My state, Indiana is an e-verify. My brother is a builder and has dealt with it or years. If says it is basically a joke mess. He would have to file out the proper forms of new employee that would eventually return a letter saying there is an issue about 6 months later (usually after they were gone). Then the e-verify service would send you a letter saying the new employee may not be a legal citizen but they would not tell you if you hand to remove them and if you did and the paperwork was wrong the employer would be responsible for the legal issue and the e-verify service was not responsible. The way he explained it, it seemed to be more of a political thing that was set up to make them look like they were doing something.
The pro-rampant and pro-open borders immigration forum “The National Immigration Forum” hates the passage of “The Secure the Border Act.”
https://immigrationforum.org/article/bill-analysis-the-secure-the-border-act-of-2023/
The discussion at the above link includes the idea that the following regulations are reprehensible:
1. The Secure the Border Act of 2023 would restart border wall construction and defund NGOs that provide services to migrants
The bill would increase funding for border barriers and enforcement personnel, while dismantling current practices that relieve pressure on U.S. border communities. In particular, it would:
Just out of curiosity, what does this mean? I would think that U.S. border communities would have the right to relieve illegal-immigrant pressure as they choose. Does this mean that only the federal government may pass and enforce laws to relieve pressure on border towns, counties, and states?
Yes this is all part of a pattern that we have seen here in California for at least 15 years. Even as the southern border has been almost totally open, except for during Trump’s first term, the public was told that we must not discriminate when hiring but instead but must ensure that we are hiring the right number of hispanics.
But on the other hand, the public was also told that it was a serious crime to hire an illegal from south of the border, or anywhere else for that matter. And that somehow we are supposed to discern if the very official looking visa, green card or citizenship papers were valid and real, or invalid and forged. (Big money goes into forging such documents and the legitimacy of such can be difficult to discern.)
Meanwhile the government aid programs are up and ready to be assessed by any warm body who is not American born.
No ID! No problem. Plus the US government does not have the ability to know if the person registering for AFDC bennies, food stamps, housing vouchers, health insurance and more has a bank account in another country or not. (Quite often the individual does, but prefers to come here, get a job and benefits, and then later after accumulating a tidy sum of monies, return back to the native country. Often without filing any taxes, of course.)
If you are American born, and need help, you better be willing to wait til you have the birth certificate driver’s license etc in hand, as well as at least two years of banking records. Because after all, you might be ripping off the system. (I think someone finally built some compassion into the system if everything you owned went up in smoke in one of Calif’s many wildfires. But the first few groups of people experiencing such were given the run around.)
Your comment makes it sound like you think that Massie and the Brownstone Org is insisting that we have E-verify. (Unless I am reading you wrong.)
When actually they are leery of having the program come about.
Optimistic?
The the Hospital System I used to work for used E-verify. I don’t know if HR used it for staff. I know it was used at the registration desk during the patient check in process. I assumed it was a way to verify ID for insurance purposes but I really don’t know. Then it went away.
I never thought it was threatening to US citizens but I didn’t give it a lot of thought either. Anyway, the health providers know a lot about us anyway. Once they scan your ID (drivers license) and have your insurance information you have no secrets. I currently have no concerns if it is used to verify citizens and legal residents.
American Employers should not be forced to do the work the Federal, State and Local governments refuse to do.
Ban E-Verify.
So there is no “E” in the “E-verify” for Indiana?!? Weird. I know a guy that runs a small company that does background checks. They have so much data on people and can run checks in a seconds. All the big social media companies now much more. Then the financial companies (credit rating and credit providing) can make a decision in seconds.
This does not need to be scary. The law can be written without giving the executive branch the leeway to do what they please. It can also be written to provide people a legal recourse in the case of abuse.
If Thomas Masse is not smart enough to write laws correctly, then he should pack up and go home. I lost a lot of respect for him today.
This has always been my take since this e-verify thing first popped up.
Who collects income taxes? I’ll wait….
Illegals tend not to produce much tax revenue, especially when they’re paid “under the table.” And they often get more in benefits than they pay in taxes.
As I understood it. And this was just me and my brother talking about it. The person would get verified quickly. It was just be 6 months or so later he would get a letter of the sort that the information given was used in XX number of people and there is some question about that person’s validity. The first part of the letter was the sort that hey there is a problem and he needed to address it. There their was a list of all the things he was not allowed to do about it or be in trouble. From his point of view it usually was not an issue in that the person hired had left before the letter showed up. In one case he had the guy was still with him and my brother called him to drop by the office because there was a paperwork issue. They guy never showed up again. My brother is a small business person. Builds about 20 homes a year at the 1 million or above level. Only a few full time sorts most are only around for 3 to 6 months.
We discussed it a few years back and maybe the system is better now but he thought it looked more like just silliness.
Given the context of the statement which so clearly contradicts the rest of the information surrounding it, I wonder if it is a positive statement that was meant to be negative. Only the copy editor did not question it. (Unfortunately.)
On the other hand, it could be that the current practice of having buses and even airplanes transport the newly arrived from the location where they arrived into the US, so that the Mexicans who crossed this morning into a border town in TX could be flown to Minneapolis by this evening, are practices that will be shut down.
Many working immigrants have no incentive to pay taxes.between what they make as mid level construction personnel and what the wife is able to obtain in benefits from the local Social Services office, the game plan is to work for a few years here while handling their income carefully.
They send money back to relatives in Mexico or wherever. Those relatives are then building that family a home.
Should a letter from the IRS arrive, they simply leave the states earlier than they planned.
This is not a strategy most legal Americans can utilize. (Obviously.)
We have no border. Therefore we are not a nation. Therefore citizenship is a meaningless concept.
Plan accordingly.
Governor GOPe at his best.
I wouldn’t worry too much, CarolJoy. Arizona has required the use of E-Verify since 2008.
It’s always possible for a system to be misused, but I’ve used the E-Verify system myself. It was about 8-10 years ago, and as I recall, the purpose was to match a prospective employee’s photo ID and social security number.