Few Businesses Use Government's E-Verify System. Hmmmmnnnn, I Wonder Why?

Few use feds' simple tool to verify legal workers
By Chris Collins and Michael Doyle

Businesses have a free, simple way to check that their new hires are legal. Although far from perfect, it could reduce the lure of employment that draws illegal immigrants, experts say.

But most employers who depend on illegal workers -- including the vast majority of agriculture businesses in the Central Valley -- won't use it.

And Congress, under pressure from business leaders, refuses to make them -- despite a clear voter mandate to stop illegal immigration.

Called E-Verify, the online government program uses records from the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security to instantly check an employee's legal status after being hired. When word gets around that an employer uses the program, illegal immigrants stop applying, experts say.

A law requiring all businesses to use E-Verify would make it much more difficult for illegal immigrants to find work, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies, which supports stricter immigration enforcement.

"It's one of the most successful programs that the immigration agencies have undertaken," she said.

The program has run into strong opposition from business groups that say it creates an administrative burden. But experts say the real reason is that E-Verify makes it harder to hire illegal workers.

Manuel Cunha, president of the Fresno-based Nisei Farmers League, an association of agriculture businesses in the Western U.S., acknowledged as much.

"It may work for Costco, but Costco doesn't have the problem I have" -- a shortage of legal residents willing to work in agriculture, he said.

The debate over E-Verify has put local conservative groups in a tricky position: They oppose illegal immigration, but they support businesses that rely on illegal immigrants.

Michael Der Manouel Jr. is chairman of the Lincoln Club of Fresno County, which includes many local business and agriculture leaders. He says companies should use E-verify -- otherwise, he said, they are signaling that they think it's acceptable to employ illegal immigrants.

"You can't say it's against the law and ignore E-Verify," Der Manouel said. "So be consistent, take a position."

E-Verify isn't popular in the San Joaquin Valley. Out of thousands of businesses in Fresno, for example, only 179 use the program, federal figures show -- although those numbers don't account for businesses that contract with personnel companies using the program.

Gary Honeycutt, owner of BJ's Kountry Kitchen restaurants in Fresno and a manager for agriculture properties, said he's never considered using E-Verify. Instead, he said, he depends on his own ability to detect fake documents.

"I can truthfully say that, to my knowledge, I've never employed an illegal person," he said. "If we suspect that the documents are phony, we do not hire that person."

Jana Hall, president of Bruce K. Hall Construction in Fresno, said her company signed up for E-Verify last year -- but only because a contract with a federal agency for construction work required it.

With high unemployment and plenty of workers looking for jobs, Hall said she doesn't mind using E-Verify. But once the economy improves and workers become more scarce, "I might have a different feeling about it," she said.

Farmers, meanwhile, say they'd rather have a legal workforce but need to hire illegal immigrants. Without them, crops would rot and their competitors -- who all hire illegal workers -- would have an unfair advantage. In the end, they say, it's the government's job to make sure their workforce is legal.

"We don't want to be in the role of playing police officer -- that's not something any of our businesses should have to do," said Ryan Jacobsen, director of the Fresno County Farm Bureau.

Some in the construction industry share that view. Dave Jones, manager of the Associated General Contractors of California for the San Joaquin district, said contractors in his association are focused on getting the job done, not determining workers' legal status.

"If the workers know what they're doing, that's more important," he said.

There are exceptions. Michele Peterson, general manager of the Fresno housecleaning service Mini Mops, uses a personnel company that screens employees with E-Verify.

Peterson said it can be hard to find employees who are legal residents and are willing to work for minimum wage. But she wants to make sure she has a legal workforce.

"We don't hire just anybody," Peterson said.

Nationally, about 3.3% of the nation's 7 million employers use E-Verify -- and some 1,100 employers enroll every week. Among agriculture companies, 2.2% use E-Verify, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program. Cunha said employers who hire workers en masse -- such as farmers -- don't have the time or resources to use the program, which he described as "very, very bureaucratic."

"How does a farm-labor contractor sit there trying to type in names when he's trying to do safety and heat-illness training and trying to get the worker's name right?" Cunha said. "They don't have bookkeepers, they don't have H.R. people."

In response to Cunha's concerns, two E-Verify officials visited Fresno County in early June. Cunha gave them a tour of farms and nurseries where they saw how employees are hired. The officials described the trip as "very educational," but concluded that there was no reason agriculture employers couldn't use E-Verify.

"We've heard from different sectors of the economy that it's not very usable for them," said Mac McMillan, chief of the verification division of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. "My response is that E-Verify is a very accurate system."

E-Verify officials said they are using the information they received from the trip to make improvements, such as making the program more accessible on cell phones and integrating it into payroll software. Alternatively, they said, farmers who don't want to use E-Verify can hire personnel companies that are more familiar with the program.

Federal law requires many government contractors to use E-Verify. In Arizona, Mississippi, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Utah, all employers must enroll in the program. And in eight other states, at least some public agencies must use it. California has no E-Verify requirement, although several cities have mandated its use for businesses. None are in the central San Joaquin Valley.

But efforts to expand the mandate to all employers have failed. Congressional lawmakers haven't even agreed to make E-Verify a permanent program.

Last year, for instance, the House approved a big economic stimulus package with a provision that extended and strengthened E-Verify through 2013. The U.S. Senate's version of the bill lacked this provision, and congressional negotiators omitted it in the final bill. In March 2009, by a 50-47 vote, the Senate subsequently killed a separate effort to extend the program through 2014.

"Our Democratic leadership is blocking an effort to make E-Verify permanent or even extend it for just five years," Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions noted during last year's debate. "What does that signal, I ask?"

Read more: http://www.fresnobee.com/2010/11/15/2157541/few-use-feds-simple-tool-to-verify.html#ixzz15Msq9Nhr