E-Verify is bad for workers, bad for business, and bad for the economy! Electronic verification, the system designed to determine a workers legal status has been proven time and again to be grossly inaccurate (20% of workers kicked off government rolls via the system are legally able to work). This equate to 770,000 workers annually denied work because of this flawed system.
Additionally, this added government regulation is a burden on small business. With an economy already struggling to revive, forcing additional regulatory measures on small business is costly and detrimental to job growth. But, worst of all, mandatory E-Verify is a jobs killer.
· Mandatory E-Verify will send more jobs overseas. Up to three-fourths of agriculture workers are undocumented. If mandatory E-Verify were to work as advertised and these workers left the fields, higher production costs and prices would lead to off-shoring of millions of jobs.
· Mandatory E-Verify without reform would expand the underground economy and greatly reduce federal tax receipts. More employers and workers would resort to “under-the-table” cash transactions outside of the tax system, causing the federal government to lose $17.3 billion over 10 years. The real losers would be American workers in an underpaying and substandard labor market and taxpayers who would have to pay more taxes to offset the losses or suffer drastic cuts in services.
· Mandatory E-Verify without Comprehensive Immigration Reform is a job killer and dangerous to the American economy. Many employers who are struggling in this weak economy would lay off workers rather than comply with a new costly and burdensome government mandate. Job growth would be stalled and scores of new workers would be pushed into the underground economy – rewarding bad-actor corporations and making life difficult for responsible corporations. 