E-Verify Victory Today Follows A Year Of Your Constant Efforts
By Roy Beck, Tuesday, September 8, 2009, 11:42 PM

Time after time after time over the last year, NumbersUSA's members mobilized to advance E-Verify and close off millions more jobs to illegal aliens. And just as many times, you suffered defeat. It is oh so difficult to maintain perseverance amidst so many losses, but you did. And your perseverance led to a gigantic victory today as the Obama Administration made a huge leap in immigration enforcement.

Remember our narrow losses last winter in trying to persuade the Congress to require all economic stimulus jobs to go through E-Verify?

Well, our victory today essentially makes that happen.

Starting today, every contract over $100,000 that the federal government awards will be on paper that tells the contractor:

* for every new hire in the entire corporation, run him/her through E-Verify to keep illegal aliens from getting jobs,
* for every existing employee who works on the actual federal contract, run him/her through E-Verify, no matter how many years he/she has already been employed -- to force illegal aliens out of their jobs.

And every company that gets a subcontract from a federal contractor that is worth $3,000 or more will have to abide by the same E-Verify rules.

It is estimated that over the next year, most companies doing federal contract work will have obtained at least one contract since today and, therefore, be mandated to use E-Verify.

Some estimates are that the number of new hires covered by E-Verify will go from a little over 10% to 20% of total new hires.

I have been trying to think of when we have had a bigger single improvement in the battle against illegal immigration. The 1996 Act may have been, but I think it was more promise that actual change at the time. This is something that will yield results immediately and increasingly so each passing month.

This is an unlikely gift from two Presidents who routinely oppose nearly everything we stand for on immigration. This mandate on federal contractors was promulgated by Pres. Bush, a last-minute kiss from somebody who gave us the kiss-off the rest of his presidency. But he saddled Pres. Obama with having to let it go through or publicly overturn it. Obama postponed it several times this year. But when a federal court last month ruled there was nothing wrong about Bush's executive order, Obama apparently felt he had no choice. So, now we have this wonderful new and powerful enforcement device to take the job magnet away from illegal immigration.

Why did this wonderful thing come from two Presidents who would like nothing better than reward all illegal aliens with U.S. citizenship?

It all relates to the fact that both have felt enormous public pressure to stop inviting illegal aliens to enter our country and take our jobs.

And you, dear citizens and users of the NumbersUSA tools, have kept the pressure on every day of every week of this past year. And that includes a tremendous outpouring of phone calls and faxes this past week, urging that Pres. Obama allow this new E-Verify mandate to go into effect.

ROY BECK is CEO & Founder of NumbersUSA
Views and opinions expressed in blogs on this website are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect official policies of NumbersUSA.

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/nusab ... tid=970136