Business Lobbyists Finally Getting Out of Way of National E-Verify

The most important national E-Verify bill ever introduced is expected to be announced tomorrow by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), Chairman of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

After 15 years, the concept of every legitimate U.S. job going to an American (or legal immigrant already here) finally has a chance to make it into law, significantly helped by a giant change in the strategy of the nation’s business lobbies.

In fact, two national business lobbies are expected to testify in favor of the mandatory E-Verify bill later this week. (Read below on how all of this came to happen.)

WHY THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT E-VERIFY BILL

Except for back in 1996, all other E-Verify bills have been about running a flag up the flag pole to salute and build support for the future. But we never had an obvious path in turning them into law.

This bill, however, will be introduced tomorrow by the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who has every intent for it to be on the President’s desk later this year.

His immigration subcommittee chairman, Rep. Gallegly (R-Calif.), has held repeated hearings since the first of the year gaining information to put together the best bill possible. And Mr. Smith and his staff have met regularly with a wide range of interested parties to know where the barriers for passage might be.

Chairman Smith has assembled legislation that draws upon every mandatory E-Verify bill that you and we have supported through the years. That includes a bi-partisan bunch of bills by Rep. Shuler (D-N.C.), Rep. Carter (R-Texas), Rep. DeFazio (D-Oregon), Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and Sen. Pryor (D-Ark.)

Tuesday, Chairman Smith will introduce his bill.

On Wednesday, Gallegly’s subcommittee will hold a hearing on the bill.

In the next few weeks, the full Judiciary Committee could be “marking up” and voting through a bill.

How fast all of this moves through the House and toward the Senate depends on every bit of timely and continuous support that a mobilized citizenry can exhibit.

YOUR VICTORIES IN STATES & LOCALITIES CHANGED BUSINESS LOBBIES’ MINDS

For 15 years, the business lobbies have successfully fought us and prevented mandatory E-Verify.

But at the Wednesday hearing, two national business lobbies are scheduled to testify in favor of the Chairman’s bill!

That is a political shift of epic proportions. How did it happen? Here are the key elements:

You have worked with us and others to succeed in passing some kind of E-Verify law in 14 states.
The U.S. Supreme Court just gave a green light to states requiring E-Verify for new hires (NumbersUSA had an amicus in that case).
At least a dozen more states are now lined up to pass their own E-Verify law in the next year, now that the question of court suits has been resolved.
The nation’s business communities have realized that even though they had stopped Congress from mandating E-Verify, they are now facing potentially hundreds of different E-Verify laws in states, counties and cities across the land. This violates their desire for uniformity in rules.

We have always said that when we achieved mandates in enough states so that more than a quarter of all new hires were having to go through E-Verify, the business lobbies would decide they would rather have a national mandate.

Combined with our victory in persuading Pres. Obama to mandate E-Verify for all federal contractors, the tipping point has occurred.

And sure enough, business groups are ready to join your side. After all, most businesses don’t hire illegal aliens, anyway. The industries that specialize in illegal hiring are now just going to have to suck it up and obey the law and hire Americans to fill their jobs.

CULMINATION OF A 15-YEAR MARCH — BY NUMBERSUSA & LAMAR SMITH

When Chairman Smith introduces his E-Verify bill on Tuesday, it will likely represent a complexity of elements that will be the toughest enforcement that the Chairman believes can pass not only the U.S. House of Representatives but the U.S. Senate.

The goal is to start putting millions of unemployed Americans back to work by early next year.

This is not a new battle for Lamar Smith, who took over the powerful chairmanship in January.

He was chairman of the immigration subcommittee of Judiciary back in 1995-96 when he tried to move a mandatory E-Verify bill through the House. He narrowly lost that effort. If he had won in 1996, I have no doubt that millions of jobs currently held by illegal aliens would be filled by Americans who instead are unemployed.

I founded NumbersUSA later in 1996 with eventually passing national electronic workplace verification as one of our two top goals (the other was ending Chain Migration).

NumbersUSA’s activists have fought repeatedly and successfully for 15 years to prevent the dismantling of the pilot system, to expand the pilot system to all states, to make E-Verify mandatory for federal contractors — all building blocks to what we hope will be the ultimate legislation this year.

Chairman Smith believes the times has finally come to do what every serious person acknowledges has to be done to stop most illegal immigration — take away the jobs magnet with a mandatory electronic verification system.

Even Pres. Obama agrees. His reluctance is just that he wants to give an amnesty to current illegal aliens at the same time as turning off the jobs magnet for future illegal aliens.

We’ll provide details of the Chairman’s Bill tomorrow as soon as we have them for release.

This is as close to a magic bullet as there is on the illegal immigration issue.

Most people with responsibility for protecting our borders will tell you that they’ll never really slow the traffic across the borders as long as it is easy for illegal aliens to get jobs.

Pass a bill like this, and we’ll find the majority of the illegal immigration problem starts to disappear.

ROY BECK is Founder & CEO of NumbersUSA