America is still in the middle of a job crisis and unemployment is at 11.9% for Latinos. Are members of Congress doing anything about these problems? If you were paying attention to Congress yesterday, you might think they were trying to make these problems worse. How else could they explain the introduction of legislation that curbs the rights of workers?
Yesterday, Rep. Lamar Smith (R–TX) introduced HR 2164, the “Legal Workforce Act,” better known as the E-Verify bill. The legislation would require all employers in the United States to use the E-Verify program, an Internet-based system that relies on error-ridden, outdated databases to check the employment eligibility of workers.
Supporters of the flawed system claim that E-Verify ensures that jobs are reserved for those workers who are legally eligible and that concerns for abuse and errors are misguided at best. The Government Accountability Office’s evaluation and NCLR’s own fact sheet on the measure say otherwise. In Dangerous Business: Implications of an EEVS for Latinos and the U.S. Workforce, as well as other evaluations, NCLR has consistently found that foreign-born U.S. citizens and legal immigrants would be significantly impacted by a national employment eligibility verification system because they are 30 times more likely than native-born workers to be wrongly flagged as ineligible to work.
“This legislation is another example of putting cheap political maneuvers ahead of the interests of American workers. It will do nothing to create jobs, it will place a burden on all job-seeking U.S. citizens and legal immigrants, and it will not fix our broken immigration system,” said Clarissa Martínez De Castro, NCLR Director of Immigration and National Campaigns.
At a time of high unemployment and when families are losing their homes, it seems unthinkable that some members of Congress would busy themselves with making it harder for people to find and keep their jobs. But that’s exactly what is happening. With the support of advocates like you, NCLR works to stop the tide of useless legislation.