"All across the country, including New Jersey, Americans are nervous about the state of our economy, about their jobs, and about whether their wages can keep up with rapidly increasing costs for energy and food," noted Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). "In effect, what Sen. Menendez is doing is making reauthorization of a program that protects American jobs and wages contingent on a provision that would flood the labor market at a precarious time, and exert further downward pressure on wages."
FAIR has strongly advocated that E-Verify, now a voluntary program, be made permanent and mandatory for all employers. "If there is one thing that everyone in Congress seems to agree on, it is that we must make it as difficult as possible for illegal aliens to find employment in the U.S. E-Verify has been proven to be an effective and easy way for employers to determine if the workers they hire are authorized to work here. Rather than being punitive, E-Verify affords honest, law-abiding businesses with an effective way to avoid hiring illegal aliens in the first place," Stein said.
FAIR is urging the Senate leadership to remove obstacles to reauthorization of E-Verify and bring the measure to a vote before the August recess. With elections looming, the legislative calendar between now and the end of November is an extremely short one.
"Now, more than any time in recent memory, American workers need their government to protect their interests. E-Verify protects American jobs, and its reauthorization should be pro forma, not turned into an opportunity to leverage more foreign workers into our labor market," concluded Stein.
