Congress Talks E-Verify

House GOP leaders are expanding an inquiry into an enforcement program that allows employers to check the immigration status of employees. The E-Verify program has long been championed by Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's immigration panel, which will hold a hearing on it Thursday.

Many business owners believe that Gallegly and other House Republicans want to make E-Verify, currently a voluntary program for companies, mandatory. Critics of such a move, many of them farmers and landscape maintence companies, warn that it could destabilize the agricultural economy, which is heavily dependent on undocumented immigrants, and jeopardize millions of jobs held by American citizens that are upstream and downstream of farm labor.

Supporters of E-Verify say that, with minimal effort, the program ensures that jobs are filled only by U.S. citizens and those foreigners who are legally authorized to work.

After he was named chairman of the immigration subcommittee, Gallegly noted that ''making [E-Verify] universally mandatory would ease the cumbersome and easily manipulated I-9 process employers now use to screen employees. It would also greatly reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the American workforce.''

Gallegly was referring to the I-9 form, which employers must have job-seekers fill out. It requires documentation, such as a Social Security number, that the applicants are eligible to work in this country. With E-Verify, employers can run the information through federal databases to confirm it or identify people who are not legally authorized to work.

''I have a real mixed reaction from my members,'' said Randel Johnson, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ''Some find it workable, and others do not.''

''With some companies, it is the logistical problem of having a computer on your construction site'' to run the online queries, Johnson added. ''If you are running a small business, there is aversion to a new system that will make things more complicated.''

''With unemployment at 9 percent for 21 months, jobs are scarce and families are worried,'' Smith said. ''According to the Pew Hispanic Center, 7 million people are working in the U.S. illegally. These jobs should go to legal workers.''

Independent analyses of the E-Verify program by the Government Accountability Office and a Maryland research group known as Westat show that the overwhelming majority of those legally allowed to work in the country are quickly approved. A thriving market in fake Social Security numbers, however, means that the program fails to spot many undocumented immigrants.

To deter fraud, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency, which runs E-Verify, is increasingly using passports and employment-authorization documents that contain photo identification, said spokesman Chris Bentley. New efforts are underway, he added, to spot applicants who proffer fake driver's licenses.

But the elephant in the room is that significant portions of the U.S. economy depend on undocumented immigrants for labor, said Craig J. Regelbrugge, vice president of the American Nursery & Landscape Association.

''Simply put, any E-Verify expansion that comes without meaningful immigration reform would be disastrous for the American agricultural economy,'' he said. ''It will leave the United States importing food and exporting jobs.''