Agriculture Workforce Coalition vehemently opposes House Judiciary Committee's E-Verify bill.

Jacqui Fatka, Policy editor

March 3, 2015

2 Min Read
House committee passes E-verify immigration bill

In its first step of a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, the House Judiciary Committee approved by a vote of 20-13 a bill which requires employers to check the work eligibility of all future hires through the E-Verify system. However, the bill is “vehemently” opposed by the Agriculture Workforce Coalition.

Created in 1996 and operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), E-Verify checks the social security numbers of newly hired employees against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security records to help ensure that they are genuinely eligible to work in the U.S.

The program quickly confirms 99.7% of work-eligible employees and takes less than two minutes to use, the House Judiciary Committee said in a statement.  

Bill sponsor Rep. Lamar Smith (R., Texas) said that polls show that from 71% to 85% of voters “support Congress passing new legislation that strengthens the rules making it illegal for businesses in the U.S. to hire illegal immigrants.” He added that E-Verify receives the most public support of any proposed immigration form.

However, the coalition representing agricultural interests couldn’t disagree more, saying imposing mandatory E-verify without fixing the country’s broken immigration system “will sound the death knell for thousands of farming operations across the country.” AWC has consistently called for a comprehensive approach to addressing the current immigration flaws.

Agriculture faces unprecedented demographic challenges and relies heavily on foreign-born workers. The AWC said in a statement, “The economic impacts of this will spread far beyond the farm gate as Americans working in industry sectors both upstream and downstream of the farm will see their jobs threatened. Studies have shown that each of the 2 million hired farm employees supports two to three fulltime American jobs in the food processing, transportation, farm equipment, marketing, retail and other sectors.

“Mandatory E-Verify without workable labor solutions for agriculture puts these American jobs, and the economies of communities across the country in jeopardy,” AWC said.

AWC said the path forward is clear and should include a solution for agriculture that addresses both the current agricultural workforce and creates a new guest worker program to meet future needs and “only then implement a mandatory E-verify program.”

About the Author(s)

Jacqui Fatka

Policy editor, Farm Futures

Jacqui Fatka grew up on a diversified livestock and grain farm in southwest Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communications, with a minor in agriculture education, in 2003. She’s been writing for agricultural audiences ever since. In college, she interned with Wallaces Farmer and cultivated her love of ag policy during an internship with the Iowa Pork Producers Association, working in Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Capitol Hill press office. In 2003, she started full time for Farm Progress companies’ state and regional publications as the e-content editor, and became Farm Futures’ policy editor in 2004. A few years later, she began covering grain and biofuels markets for the weekly newspaper Feedstuffs. As the current policy editor for Farm Progress, she covers the ongoing developments in ag policy, trade, regulations and court rulings. Fatka also serves as the interim executive secretary-treasurer for the North American Agricultural Journalists. She lives on a small acreage in central Ohio with her husband and three children.

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