Sidebar: A history of E-Verify

E-Verify, known as the Basic Pilot/Employment Eligibility Verification Program prior to 2007, was created along with two other pilot programs as a part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 and was originally an option for only the five states with the largest immigrant populations (California, Illinois, Florida, Texas and New York). In 1999, the program was extended to cover employers in Nebraska. The two other programs — the Machine-Readable Document Pilot (which operated only in Iowa) and the Citizenship Attestation Pilot (which operated in Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia and Michigan) — were suspended in 2003.  Click below to read more.

Congress voted to reauthorize the Basic Pilot in January 2002 at roughly the same time as an independent evaluation of the Basic Pilot by Temple University and Westat was completed. The report outlined several concerns, but recommended continuing the program with modifications.

In December 2003 Congress passed the Basic Pilot Program Extension and Expansion Act. This legislation expanded the Basic Pilot to all 50 states and required the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, now partnering with the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to administer the program, to submit an evaluation report to the House and Senate by June 2004. Specifically, Congress wanted to know if the problems identified in the 2002 independent evaluation had been addressed.

The report was submitted, but questions about the accuracy of the databases behind the program and the potential for employee discrimination remained. The program is due for reauthorization by Congress in November.

The Bush Administration and the Department of Homeland Security have pushed for the program to become both permanent and mandatory for all U.S. employers. When it was discovered that a high percentage of federal government agencies were not using the program, Pres. George W. Bush signed an executive order requiring them to do so as of October 2007. His latest executive order, signed in early June, is an amendment to Executive Order 12989 from 1996 and would require all federal contractors — roughly 200,000 companies — to use E-Verify. Bush’s latest executive order has drawn the ire of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a typically friendly group to the administration. In addition, Bush’s 2009 budget includes $100 million specifically for “expansion and enhancement” of the E-Verify system.

States’ reactions have been mixed. The California Immigrant Policy Center and the Service Employees International Union are both backing legislation that would block the use of federal electronic employment verification systems by California employers. Arizona, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Mississippi, Minnesota and Missouri mandate at least employers of or above a certain size use the program to verify workers. Rod Blogojevich, governor of Illinois, signed a law in September 2007 that forbid use of the program by companies in his state. The federal government is suing Illinois to overturn the law and the state has agreed to non-enforcement until the case is settled. Mississippi went one step further by enacting the Mississippi Employment Protection Act, which is the first law to make it a felony to perform work as an undocumented immigrant.

In the final days before the August 2008 recess, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 407 to 2 to approve H.R. 6633, the Employee Verification Amendment Act of 2008, that reauthorizes E-Verify/Basic Pilot for five additional years and calls for two Government Accountability Office studies on the program. The legislation, considered a bipartisan compromise, has been sent to the Senate for consideration.