Nearly 120 industry members traveled in March to educate lawmakers on industry issues, including immigration reform. Read the story.
When President Trump laid out his general approach to immigration reform last week, he included in his principles mandatory E-Verify in the hiring process for all employers. Legislation that would do exactly that also was introduced in the House of Representatives last month.
Society of American Florists members who met with lawmakers in March during the group’s Congressional Action Days educated legislators and their staff members about the problems associated with a stand-alone E-Verify bill. In those meetings, they stressed the need for an adequate workforce now and in the future, rather than eliminating of thousands of critical workers.
Currently, most employers use the paper-based I-9 procedure in their hiring process, as they have for decades. Very few employers participate in E-Verify, since it is optional for most employers.
The I-9 system requires employers to accept documents that “appear” genuine during the hiring process and forbids them from checking their authenticity. If an employer seeks to verify the authenticity of a document, they are subject to prosecution by the federal government for civil rights violations. As a result of the requirement to accept documents, tens of thousands of undocumented workers who presented falsified documents have been hired.
It is estimated that as much as 70 percent of agriculture’s current 1.8 million workers are unauthorized and utilized false documents. If mandatory E-Verify is enacted, American agriculture could lose of 70 percent of its workforce.
No votes have been scheduled on the bill. However, SAF will continue to monitor the legislation and educate members of Congress about the problems associated with a mandatory E-Verify procedure.
