Thread: Sen. Sessions Speaks of Importance of E-Verify

Legislative Resources
Floor Statements

Sessions Speaks of Importance of E-Verify
Monday, June 1, 2009

Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I am concerned by the reports of several news outlets that the implementation of Executive Order 12989, which mandates the use of E-Verify for Federal contractors and subcontractors for the Federal Government, is now being delayed again until September of this year. This is the fourth such delay this year and I am afraid that it signals this administration is not serious about immigration enforcement--not even serious enough to utilize effective systems that we have in place.

On January 28 of this year, President Obama pushed back implementation of Executive Order 12989 to February 20. A few weeks later, that implementation date was pushed back again to May 21. Prior to that date, implementation was pushed back to June 30. Now various sources are reporting implementation will be delayed until sometime in September. E-Verify is one of the most effective tools at our disposal for protecting American jobs and should be made mandatory and permanent. Instead, the administration yet again has decided to delay this program as it applies to Federal contractors and subcontractors--that is, people who do work for the Federal Government; not every private business, just those who get jobs and money from the Federal Government to do contracting work. The administration claims they need more time to review the program. But it has been 5 months already.

I was also, let me recall, extremely disappointed when this Senate's Democratic Members stripped the E-Verify provisions from the final version of the economic stimulus package without discussion or debate. I tried to bring up an amendment in the Senate that would have matched the language that the House accepted unanimously in committee and was included in the final version of their bill. That language said that contractors who get money out of the stimulus program from the Federal Government had to use E-Verify, this computer system, to determine whether the people they are hiring are legally in the country. That was not too much to ask, I thought. The House, as I said, unanimously accepted that provision in committee and passed it overwhelmingly as part of the final version of their bill.

Every time I sought to bring it up, it was blocked by the Democratic leadership. They did not want to vote on it. It became pretty clear why, because if it was in the Senate bill and the House bill, it would certainly be in the final conference report language and would become law. As long as they could keep it out of the Senate bill, when they went to conference they could take the language that had been passed in the House out of the bill. Part of the compromise in conference would be to eliminate the E-Verify related language. I warned that would happen and that is exactly what did happen. We could not get a vote in the Senate. If we had gotten a vote, I am confident the Senate would have voted in favor of requiring recipients of stimulus funds to use E-verify.

The purpose of the stimulus bill was to put Americans back to work. Unemployment continues to rise. We are now hearing it will hit 10 percent. That is a serious number, much higher than some were projecting. I think the Obama administration's budget projected unemployment would be between 8.1 to 8.5 percent. Currently, unemployment rates are close to 9 percent and many are saying we will hit 10 percent. So why would we want to use stimulus money that was promoted as a way to create jobs for Americans and reduce unemployment in this time of recession and not make sure that those jobs go to American citizens. I think it is a matter of real, serious import and I am baffled by it.

Briefly, E-Verify is an on-line system operated jointly by Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. Employers can check the work status of people who apply to work for them on line by comparing information from the employee I-9 application form against the Social Security and DHS databases. More than 112,000 employers are already using it because they do not desire to hire somebody not legally in the country. I think they should be congratulated for that.

It also helps the employer because they can use this as a defense and say I used the E-Verify system if it is later found out that an employee they hired is here illegally. It did not tell me the person was illegal. They produced a document. It looked good to me. I checked the number and they said it was OK. They are protected. They have safe harbor against Government action for hiring people who are illegal.

E-Verify is a free and voluntary system. As a practical matter, it is the best means we have today for determining employment eligibility for any hires and the validity of their Social Security number.

We have had thousands of employees using bogus Social Security numbers to get work. There are examples of hundreds of people being hired under the same Social Security number. Well, that ought to give somebody a clue.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, 96 percent of the employees who are checked by businesses are cleared immediately. So the idea that large numbers of people are being blocked is not true. If you are not cleared, you can still be hired temporarily until further validation occurs to see if you have a legitimate Social Security number or if you are legitimately in the country.

It is working fine. This many companies would not be using it if it were not. On a related note, though people do not like to talk about the impact of illegal immigration on low-skilled workers, we must be factual. The large number of illegal workers in this country is having a depressing effect, particularly on the standard of living of low-skilled Americans.

The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late civil rights pioneer, Barbara Jordan, found:

Immigration of unskilled immigrants comes at a cost to unskilled U.S. workers.

The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that such immigration has reduced the wage of the average native-born workers in a low-skilled occupation by 12 percent, or almost $2,000 annually.

Harvard economist, George Borjas, himself an immigrant from Cuba, has studied this probably more than any other person in the whole source of issues on this. He has written a book on the subject. He has estimated that immigration in recent decades reduced the wages of native-born workers without a high school degree by 8.2 percent.

Doris Meissner, in 2009, a few months ago, the former head of Immigration Services under President Clinton, said:

Mandatory employer verification [that is what we are talking about through E-Verify] must be at the center of legislation to combat illegal immigration ..... the E-Verify system provides a valuable tool for employers who are trying to comply with the law. E-Verify also provides an opportunity to determine the best electronic means to implement verification requirements. The administration should support reauthorization of E-Verify and expand the program ..... ''

That was Doris Meissner, the INS Director under President Clinton, who said that a few months ago.

Alexander Aleinkoff, who was an official at INS under President Clinton, and the Obama administration DHS transition official--he participated in the transition for President Obama--calls it a ``myth'' that ``there is little or no competition between undocumented workers and American workers.''

I know our majority leader has written that he favors the E-Verify Program. Senator Reid wrote this:

I strongly believe that every job in our country should go only to those who are authorized to work in the United States. That is why I strongly support programs like E-Verify that are designed to ensure that employers only hire those who are legally authorized to work in the United States, and believe we need to strengthen enforcement against employers who knowingly hire individuals who are not authorized to work. I support reauthorization of the E-Verify program, as well as immigration reform that is tough on lawbreakers, fair to taxpayers and practical to implement.

Those are Senator Reid's comments. So it is time for us to get busy. Let's do some of these things. I know some have said this is a cumbersome program. That is not so. These are excuses put out by big businesses that are using workers, many of whom they have reason to believe--I would suggest--are illegal. They do not want to be checked. They do not want to have any checks.

There was a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal by Mark Powell, a human resource executive for a Fortune 500 company. This is what he said about how hard it is to use this system:

The E-Verify program is free, only takes a few minutes, and is less work than a car dealership would do checking a credit score prior to selling a vehicle or letting you take a test drive.

Well, that is correct. He is right about that. How else can you explain the thousands of employers who voluntarily sign up to use the program? Short-term extensions and delay in implementation, such as what we are seeing today, only discourage participation in the E-Verify Program, since employers have no assurance that the program will even exist down the road.

I have offered legislation, and others have worked on the floor, to try to make E-Verify permanent and mandatory. We keep having one roadblock after another one.

Who is pulling the strings around here? I do not believe they are talking to the American people. I do not believe whoever it is blocking this kind of activity is talking to the American people, talking to people with common sense.

They must be talking with people who have special interests that are not interested in a lawful system. T.J. Bonner, who heads the Border Patrol Officers Association, testified at the Judiciary Committee, and he said this many times: One of the best things, perhaps the best thing, you can do to reduce the numbers of people who enter our country illegally is to eliminate the jobs magnet. The jobs possibility is a magnet that draws those who come illegally.

He said: There are a lot of things that can be done to eliminate that magnet, and this is one of them.

Further delay in the implementation of this Executive order is not acceptable, I believe, and am afraid it signals some sort of lack of commitment to enforce our immigration laws. You see, E-Verify does not require anybody to be arrested, it does not require anybody to be deported, it does not require anything--you simply do not get the job if you are not legally authorized to work. Law enforcement officers are not called. The businesses check the number to see if the person is legally here with a valid Social Security number, and if they have information that the individual is not, then they do not hire them.

That is all that happens. How simple is that? It is a good step, a modest step but an important step. We keep putting it off and keep rejecting the idea that even Government contractors that get work from the Government of the United States should have to use the program.

Every employer in America should be using the program. That is where we should be going. That is the policy we should be pursuing if we are at all serious about dealing with the matter.

There has been some good news. The good news is that last year, our border enforcement officers arrested only 770,000 people entering our country illegally. A couple years ago it was over 1.1 million arrests. That number doesn't include illegal aliens that evade CBP agents at the border. The reason the number of apprehensions is still so high, in my opinion, and I have studied it a good bit, is that we have inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, sent messages around the world that our border is open.

As long as we have a willing worker and a willing employer, President Bush once said, he almost said: I am okay with it. Well, that is not right, is it? We have laws. Good people every day apply to come to our country and to enter our country through legal channels. Some of them have to wait in line, and they do so dutifully. But large numbers are ignoring that because somehow they have gotten the impression that nobody here cares at all.

So we have stepped up enforcement. We have built some fencing, not nearly what was contemplated being built, but we built some. We are doing better. We are prosecuting some of the people who enter the country illegally. That has worked dramatically. I do not mean long times in jail but a prosecution for a misdemeanor.

They serve a little time, they got a conviction, if they come back it can be a felony. That is working. So you do those kind of things and it makes a big difference. If we make the E-Verify system a part of what we do within this country every day, and especially for government business, that will further send the signal to the world that our country is not open to illegal entry. If you want to come you should come under the normal, lawful process.

It is so important America reestablish the rule of law when it comes to immigration in our country. We are a nation of immigrants. We are the most generous Nation, I think, in the world for allowing people to come here. But there has to be some limit on those numbers. It has to be done in an orderly fashion, a lawful fashion.

If you do not have order and lawfulness at our border and you have huge numbers coming through every year, then it undermines respect for law and sends a signal worldwide that we are not serious.

I think we are making some progress. We need to get E-Verify going. It needs to be made permanent and mandatory. At the very least, every business that does business with the U.S. Government should have to use it. Pretty soon every business in America should use it. When we do that, we will have taken a big step toward assuring even ourselves that we mean what we say and that we are going to establish a lawful program.

Some say we need these workers. Well, let's talk about a good guest worker program that would work, and we could allow people to come legally. That is critically important. So when your unemployment rate is going over 9 percent, highest in over 20 years, then maybe we do not need as many people coming into our country, as some people have said we do.

But regardless, there ought to be a mechanism for allowing temporary workers to come, the number allowed to come should serve our national interest, and we ought not to allow the large numbers who are now coming illegally to come and be able to successfully take jobs that Americans need right now.

Maybe the reports saying that the administration is delaying implementation of mandatory E-Verify for Federal contractors are not correct. But since we have seen it happen several times already, I think it is important the American people know something is not going well here and maybe there will be an opportunity to make their voices heard and maybe we can somehow, some way get this E-Verify Program made permanent and workable.
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(The following was printed above Sen. Sessions's statement on his website)

The Standing Rules of the Senate are drafted to encourage vigorous public debate on our nation’s most important issues. Indeed, the U.S. Senate is often referred to as “the world’s greatest deliberative body.â€

Thank God for Senator Sessions, he is an American Hero!

Yeah too bad the others aren't like him. Life would be so much easier. Gee just think a man who follows the Constitution, enforces laws already on the books, would protect our borders...gee I guess that would be too easy.

http://www.youtube.com/user/SenatorSessions

Sessions page on YouTube Senate page

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Time for Arnold to get an earful!!! Please take action!

http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-908144.html#908144

Find Businesses Already Using the E-Verify Database

http://www.numbersusa.com/content/learn ... abase.html