Abasto Magazine

» Bonus. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English Employers see many negative impacts of mandatory E-Verify Abasto Staff M any people feel that this is just one more anti- immigrant bill; many believe it should always have been a requirement. The fact is that there are social and economic eff ects of a national implementation of E-Verify that must be considered. E-Verify—the U.S. government’s Internet-based tool designed to verify work eligibility—will continue to be the focal point of the legislative ba les over immigration reform this summer. House Judiciary Commi ee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) recently proposed the Legal Workforce Acts of 2011, also known as the E-Verify bill, which would make E-Verify mandatory on a national level. Pro-immigrant groups, businesses, agricultural companies, and many other groups are publicly opposing this legislation, and imploring the members of Congress to look to the experiences of state legislatures who have already begun fi ghting this ba le, as well as to the economic impacts of the E-Verify bill on business owners. In states where legislatures have instituted E-Verify, employers have suff ered fi nancial burdens and have encountered diffi culties in maintaining a suffi cient workforce. For example, in Georgia the E-Verify law went into eff ect at the beginning of July, and farmers are already predicting various consequences as a result of the new law. 50 | | Julio/Agosto 2011 In a recent press release from the National Immigration Forum, Charles Hall, Executive Director of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Association is quoted as saying, “As most Georgia produce growers have completed their 2011 spring harvest, the outlook for the fall and spring of 2012 is very uncertain. Fruit and vegetable growers must know they have reliable and dependable harvest crews or the growers will reduce their fruit and vegetable acreage or turn to less labor intensive crops.” The Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Association also said that hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops could be at risk if empty agriculture jobs in Georgia remain vacant. Businesses leaders and members of the agricultural community in Florida opposed this legislation because of anticipated threats to Florida’s economy, and therefore the proposed statewide legislation has already been defeated twice. According to Jose Gonzalez, vice president of Governmental Aff airs of the Associated Industries of Florida (AIF), “Mandating the costly and burdensome E-Verify system is tantamount to a new tax on Florida’s employers.” It is estimated that about 4 percent of American employers already use E-Verify, but expanding its use to cover all U.S. businesses, from the small grocery store to the biggest employers in the nation, will require diffi cult and costly measures. Employers will not have to pay to use this service, however a recent study by Bloomberg found that E-Verify it would have cost small businesses $2.6 billion if it been mandatory throughout the nation in 2010. That study also estimates that the average economic impact of implementing and running E-Verify for a small business will be approximately $435 per year.

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