Just ahead of the House Judiciary Committee's markup of a mandatory E-Verify bill, small business owners, community leaders, and workers will unite on Wednesday, September 14 to speak out against Congressional proposals that would mandate virtually all employers to use an error-ridden government computer database created to determine a person's authorization to work in this country. Although the program has been widely criticized for its costs, some members of Congress are determined to pass the job-killing bill.
"This E-Verify proposal is bad for small businesses, bad for our workforce, and bad for the country's bottom line," said small business owner David Borris. "We need the U.S. Chamber to listen to small business, and withdraw its support for this flawed proposal. Why is the Chamber nibbling around the margins and accepting a piecemeal non-solution that will have a serious negative impact on small businesses?"
On Wednesday, September 14, small business owners, labor leaders, and workers across the country will participate in events condemning legislative attempts to make E-Verify mandatory for virtually all employers. The day of action will focus on the consequences of implementing another unfunded mandate on small businesses at a time of extreme economic hardship.
Labor leaders and workers also will discuss how current legislative mandatory E-Verify proposals will quash a worker's rights, will lead to discrimination and will cause chaos at the workplace. For more information about E-Verify, please visit the National Immigration Law Center
here.
http://www.seiu.org/2011/09/media-advisory-workers-community-leaders-and-busin.phpThe 10 Numbers You Need to Know About E-Verify - from the Center for American Progresshttp://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/everify_numbers.htmlE-Verify is an immigration enforcement tool. It is the federal government’s Internet-based system that allows employers to check whether prospective employees are legally authorized to work in the United States. Currently, only 4 percent of all American businesses use the system, but House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) has introduced the Legal Workforce Act of 2011, H.R. 2164, to make E-Verify mandatory for all employers across the country.
This mandate would cost Americans their jobs and crush small businesses. And an important point that appears to be lost in Rep. Smith’s proposal is that E-Verify does not even work at catching unauthorized workers—precisely what it is designed to do. The real solution is to pair E-Verify with a program that ensures a full legal workforce and to phase it in gradually to allow the government to make it error proof.
The 10 numbers below illustrate the drastic effects of an E-Verify mandate on all Americans.