‘Dreamer’ shutdown halts E-Verify, a key illegal immigration enforcement tool
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Saturday, January 20, 2018
One of the ironies of the immigration-fueled shutdown is that the government’s most powerful tool for weeding out illegal-immigrant workers was also shut down.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said E-Verify, the electronic system the government offers to businesses to check their employees’ work eligibility, is a casualty of the shutdown.
The shutdown was spurred by Democrats’ demands to legalize millions of illegal immigrant “Dreamers” in exchange for allowing the government to be funded for another four weeks. Efforts to strike a compromise on immigration stalled, so Democrats, joined by four Republicans, filibustered Friday to make good on their threat.
Most immigration law enforcement can keep going, with border and interior officers and agents deemed essential employees. Even at USCIS, which runs the legal side of the U.S. immigration system, most operations can continue, since the agency is mostly funded by fees it collects from immigrants and visitors.
But E-Verify is an exception, funded specifically by Congress. When money ran out Saturday, the program was suspended.
According to past guidance, businesses that use E-Verify are supposed to collect their new hires’ information on paper, and when the shutdown is over they are supposed to try to enter the information back into the electronic system.
In a further twist, President Trump and House Republicans had wanted any immigration deal on Capitol Hill to make E-Verify mandatory for all businesses nationwide.
Some Democrats complain about E-verify, saying it has some errors and saying they won’t accept any new interior enforcement until most illegal immigrants are legalized.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...migration-enf/
