[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13466-13468]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                E-VERIFY

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I am concerned by the reports of 
several news outlets that the implementation of Executive Order 12989, 
which mandates the use of E-Verify for Federal contractors and 
subcontractors for the Federal Government, is now being delayed again 
until September of this year. This is the fourth such delay this year 
and I am afraid that it signals this administration is not serious 
about immigration enforcement--not even serious enough to utilize 
effective systems that we have in place.
  On January 28 of this year, President Obama pushed back 
implementation of Executive Order 12989 to February 20. A few weeks 
later, that implementation date was pushed back again to May 21. Prior 
to that date, implementation was pushed back to June 30. Now various 
sources are reporting implementation will be delayed until sometime in 
September. E-Verify is one of the most effective tools at our disposal 
for protecting American jobs and should be made mandatory and 
permanent. Instead, the administration yet again has decided to delay 
this program as it applies to Federal contractors and subcontractors--
that is, people who do work for the Federal Government; not every 
private business, just those who get jobs and money from the Federal 
Government to do contracting work. The administration claims they need 
more time to review the program. But it has been 5 months already.
  I was also, let me recall, extremely disappointed when this Senate's 
Democratic Members stripped the E-Verify provisions from the final 
version of the economic stimulus package without discussion or debate. 
I tried to bring up an amendment in the Senate that would have matched 
the language that the House accepted unanimously in committee and was 
included in the final version of their bill. That language said that 
contractors who get money out of the stimulus program from the Federal 
Government had to use E-Verify, this computer system, to determine 
whether the people they are hiring are legally in the country. That was 
not too much to ask, I thought. The House, as I said, unanimously 
accepted that provision in committee and passed it overwhelmingly as 
part of the final version of their bill.
  Every time I sought to bring it up, it was blocked by the Democratic 
leadership. They did not want to vote on it. It became pretty clear 
why, because if it was in the Senate bill and the House bill, it would 
certainly be in the final conference report language and would become 
law. As long as they could keep it out of the Senate bill, when they 
went to conference they could take the language that had been passed in 
the House out of the bill. Part of the compromise in conference would 
be to eliminate the E-Verify related language. I warned that would 
happen and that is exactly what did happen. We could not get a vote in 
the Senate. If we had gotten a vote, I am confident the Senate would 
have voted in favor of requiring recipients of stimulus funds to use E-
verify.
  The purpose of the stimulus bill was to put Americans back to work. 
Unemployment continues to rise. We are now hearing it will hit 10 
percent. That is a serious number, much higher than some were 
projecting. I think the Obama administration's budget projected 
unemployment would be between 8.1 to 8.5 percent. Currently, 
unemployment rates are close to 9 percent and many are saying we will 
hit 10 percent. So why would we want to use stimulus money that was 
promoted as a way to create jobs for Americans and reduce unemployment 
in this time of recession and not make sure that those jobs go to 
American citizens. I think it is a matter of real, serious import and I 
am baffled by it.
  Briefly, E-Verify is an on-line system operated jointly by Homeland 
Security and the Social Security Administration. Employers can check 
the work

[[Page 13467]]

status of people who apply to work for them on line by comparing 
information from the employee I-9 application form against the Social 
Security and DHS databases. More than 112,000 employers are already 
using it because they do not desire to hire somebody not legally in the 
country. I think they should be congratulated for that.
  It also helps the employer because they can use this as a defense and 
say I used the E-Verify system if it is later found out that an 
employee they hired is here illegally. It did not tell me the person 
was illegal. They produced a document. It looked good to me. I checked 
the number and they said it was OK. They are protected. They have safe 
harbor against Government action for hiring people who are illegal.
  E-Verify is a free and voluntary system. As a practical matter, it is 
the best means we have today for determining employment eligibility for 
any hires and the validity of their Social Security number.
  We have had thousands of employees using bogus Social Security 
numbers to get work. There are examples of hundreds of people being 
hired under the same Social Security number. Well, that ought to give 
somebody a clue.
  According to the Department of Homeland Security, 96 percent of the 
employees who are checked by businesses are cleared immediately. So the 
idea that large numbers of people are being blocked is not true. If you 
are not cleared, you can still be hired temporarily until further 
validation occurs to see if you have a legitimate Social Security 
number or if you are legitimately in the country.
  It is working fine. This many companies would not be using it if it 
were not. On a related note, though people do not like to talk about 
the impact of illegal immigration on low-skilled workers, we must be 
factual. The large number of illegal workers in this country is having 
a depressing effect, particularly on the standard of living of low-
skilled Americans.
  The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late civil 
rights pioneer, Barbara Jordan, found:

       Immigration of unskilled immigrants comes at a cost to 
     unskilled U.S. workers.

  The Center for Immigration Studies has estimated that such 
immigration has reduced the wage of the average native-born workers in 
a low-skilled occupation by 12 percent, or almost $2,000 annually.
  Harvard economist, George Borjas, himself an immigrant from Cuba, has 
studied this probably more than any other person in the whole source of 
issues on this. He has written a book on the subject. He has estimated 
that immigration in recent decades reduced the wages of native-born 
workers without a high school degree by 8.2 percent.
  Doris Meissner, in 2009, a few months ago, the former head of 
Immigration Services under President Clinton, said:

       Mandatory employer verification [that is what we are 
     talking about through E-Verify] must be at the center of 
     legislation to combat illegal immigration . . . the E-Verify 
     system provides a valuable tool for employers who are trying 
     to comply with the law. E-Verify also provides an opportunity 
     to determine the best electronic means to implement 
     verification requirements. The administration should support 
     reauthorization of E-Verify and expand the program . . . ''

  That was Doris Meissner, the INS Director under President Clinton, 
who said that a few months ago.
  Alexander Aleinkoff, who was an official at INS under President 
Clinton, and the Obama administration DHS transition official--he 
participated in the transition for President Obama--calls it a ``myth'' 
that ``there is little or no competition between undocumented workers 
and American workers.''
  I know our majority leader has written that he favors the E-Verify 
Program. Senator Reid wrote this:

       I strongly believe that every job in our country should go 
     only to those who are authorized to work in the United 
     States. That is why I strongly support programs like E-Verify 
     that are designed to ensure that employers only hire those 
     who are legally authorized to work in the United States, and 
     believe we need to strengthen enforcement against employers 
     who knowingly hire individuals who are not authorized to 
     work. I support reauthorization of the E-Verify program, as 
     well as immigration reform that is tough on lawbreakers, fair 
     to taxpayers and practical to implement.

  Those are Senator Reid's comments. So it is time for us to get busy. 
Let's do some of these things. I know some have said this is a 
cumbersome program. That is not so. These are excuses put out by big 
businesses that are using workers, many of whom they have reason to 
believe--I would suggest--are illegal. They do not want to be checked. 
They do not want to have any checks.
  There was a recent letter to the Wall Street Journal by Mark Powell, 
a human resource executive for a Fortune 500 company. This is what he 
said about how hard it is to use this system:

       The E-Verify program is free, only takes a few minutes, and 
     is less work than a car dealership would do checking a credit 
     score prior to selling a vehicle or letting you take a test 
     drive.

  Well, that is correct. He is right about that. How else can you 
explain the thousands of employers who voluntarily sign up to use the 
program? Short-term extensions and delay in implementation, such as 
what we are seeing today, only discourage participation in the E-Verify 
Program, since employers have no assurance that the program will even 
exist down the road.
  I have offered legislation, and others have worked on the floor, to 
try to make E-Verify permanent and mandatory. We keep having one 
roadblock after another one.
  Who is pulling the strings around here? I do not believe they are 
talking to the American people. I do not believe whoever it is blocking 
this kind of activity is talking to the American people, talking to 
people with common sense.
  They must be talking with people who have special interests that are 
not interested in a lawful system. T.J. Bonner, who heads the Border 
Patrol Officers Association, testified at the Judiciary Committee, and 
he said this many times: One of the best things, perhaps the best 
thing, you can do to reduce the numbers of people who enter our country 
illegally is to eliminate the jobs magnet. The jobs possibility is a 
magnet that draws those who come illegally.
  He said: There are a lot of things that can be done to eliminate that 
magnet, and this is one of them.
  Further delay in the implementation of this Executive order is not 
acceptable, I believe, and am afraid it signals some sort of lack of 
commitment to enforce our immigration laws. You see, E-Verify does not 
require anybody to be arrested, it does not require anybody to be 
deported, it does not require anything--you simply do not get the job 
if you are not legally authorized to work. Law enforcement officers are 
not called. The businesses check the number to see if the person is 
legally here with a valid Social Security number, and if they have 
information that the individual is not, then they do not hire them.
  That is all that happens. How simple is that? It is a good step, a 
modest step but an important step. We keep putting it off and keep 
rejecting the idea that even Government contractors that get work from 
the Government of the United States should have to use the program.
  Every employer in America should be using the program. That is where 
we should be going. That is the policy we should be pursuing if we are 
at all serious about dealing with the matter.
  There has been some good news. The good news is that last year, our 
border enforcement officers arrested only 770,000 people entering our 
country illegally. A couple years ago it was over 1.1 million arrests. 
That number doesn't include illegal aliens that evade CBP agents at the 
border. The reason the number of apprehensions is still so high, in my 
opinion, and I have studied it a good bit, is that we have 
inadvertently, perhaps intentionally, sent messages around the world 
that our border is open.
  As long as we have a willing worker and a willing employer, President 
Bush once said, he almost said: I am okay with it. Well, that is not 
right, is it? We have laws. Good people every day apply to come to our 
country and to

[[Page 13468]]

enter our country through legal channels. Some of them have to wait in 
line, and they do so dutifully. But large numbers are ignoring that 
because somehow they have gotten the impression that nobody here cares 
at all.
  So we have stepped up enforcement. We have built some fencing, not 
nearly what was contemplated being built, but we built some. We are 
doing better. We are prosecuting some of the people who enter the 
country illegally. That has worked dramatically. I do not mean long 
times in jail but a prosecution for a misdemeanor.
  They serve a little time, they got a conviction, if they come back it 
can be a felony. That is working. So you do those kind of things and it 
makes a big difference. If we make the E-Verify system a part of what 
we do within this country every day, and especially for government 
business, that will further send the signal to the world that our 
country is not open to illegal entry. If you want to come you should 
come under the normal, lawful process.
  It is so important America reestablish the rule of law when it comes 
to immigration in our country. We are a nation of immigrants. We are 
the most generous Nation, I think, in the world for allowing people to 
come here. But there has to be some limit on those numbers. It has to 
be done in an orderly fashion, a lawful fashion.
  If you do not have order and lawfulness at our border and you have 
huge numbers coming through every year, then it undermines respect for 
law and sends a signal worldwide that we are not serious.
  I think we are making some progress. We need to get E-Verify going. 
It needs to be made permanent and mandatory. At the very least, every 
business that does business with the U.S. Government should have to use 
it. Pretty soon every business in America should use it. When we do 
that, we will have taken a big step toward assuring even ourselves that 
we mean what we say and that we are going to establish a lawful 
program.
  Some say we need these workers. Well, let's talk about a good guest 
worker program that would work, and we could allow people to come 
legally. That is critically important. So when your unemployment rate 
is going over 9 percent, highest in over 20 years, then maybe we do not 
need as many people coming into our country, as some people have said 
we do.
  But regardless, there ought to be a mechanism for allowing temporary 
workers to come, the number allowed to come should serve our national 
interest, and we ought not to allow the large numbers who are now 
coming illegally to come and be able to successfully take jobs that 
Americans need right now.
  Maybe the reports saying that the administration is delaying 
implementation of mandatory E-Verify for Federal contractors are not 
correct. But since we have seen it happen several times already, I 
think it is important the American people know something is not going 
well here and maybe there will be an opportunity to make their voices 
heard and maybe we can somehow, some way get this E-Verify Program made 
permanent and workable.

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