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E-Verify should not be part of the stimulus package!

To:       Interested Immigration Advocates

From:   National Immigration Forum

ACTION ALERT: CALLS NEEDED TODAY

Stimulus Money with E-Verify Strings Attached Will Hurt, Not Help American Workers and Businesses.

Late last week, the House Appropriations Committee voted to include two provision related to E-Verify (the electronic worker verification system) in the economic recovery bill (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). One of the amendments, proposed by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) and approved by Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI), would make enrollment in E-Verify a condition for receiving funds provided by the recovery package.

This is a dangerous and risky attempt to expand the E-Verify program in a way that would essentially make its use mandatory for the majority of 7.4 million employers in our country. The E-Verify program has severe and well-documented failings which include:

• Unacceptably high error rates that misidentify U.S. Citizen and lawful immigrant workers
• An inability to monitor and prevent unscrupulous employers from misusing the syste
• Exacerbating, in many cases, unlawful employment practices against all workers

If Congress wants to solve the economic crisis and put Americans back to work, it should focus on economic stimulus measures.  Immigration enforcement should be the subject of a comprehensive package of immigration reforms.  Congressional leadership should not allow Representatives with a narrow focus on punishing immigrants to use the urgently-needed economic stimulus to advance their agenda. 

The Obama Administration has recently suspended for review a rule that would require all federal contractors to enroll in E-Verify.  Congress should not work at cross purposes with the Administration on this issue.  The New American and Latino voters who turned out in record numbers in the last election helped change the balance in Congress.  Their vote should be respected, and Congress should deal with immigration as a problem that needs to be solved comprehensively, not made worse by endless new enforcement measures.

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU TODAY:

1. CALL Speaker Nancy Pelosi at 202-225-0100
2. CALL Chairman David Obey at 202-225-3365
3. CALL Democratic and Republican Members of the Appropriations Committee who live in your state (see below)

TELL CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP TODAY:

• You oppose weighing down the stimulus package with E-Verify requirements and want them stripped.
• Including E-Verify in the stimulus package imposes new and costly requirements on businesses, farms, state and local governments, schools, hospitals and non-profit organizations which counteracts the purpose and effect of the stimulus.
• Delaying the receipt of stimulus funds by effectively forcing employers to use E-verify harms all American workers, businesses and the economy.
• Caving in to a minority, interested only in using immigration as a political wedge issue, is not the type of leadership Americans—particularly New Americans and Latinos—voted for in the last election.

DEMOCRAT MEMBERS OF THE APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

John P. Murtha (D-PA)                   Phone: 202-225-2065             Fax: 202-225-5709

http://www.immigrationforum.org