Last fall, I suggested that Florida governor Ron DeSantis make universal E-Verify part of his new legislative agenda. Yesterday, he announced that it would be. (I must have convinced him!) Seriously, the governor has made a promising move here that could affect the terms of the immigration debate nationwide.
As explained in my earlier piece, E-Verify is an online tool that employers can use to determine whether their employees are legally authorized to work in the U.S. During his first term, DeSantis sought to mandate the use of E-Verify by all employers across Florida. Unfortunately, business interests persuaded lawmakers to reject the governor’s proposed bill. The legislature instead passed a modest reform, reluctantly signed by DeSantis, that requires E-Verify only for the public sector and its contractors.
That was a shame, because the most effective way to discourage illegal immigrants from coming to a state is to make it difficult for them to seek employment there. A well-implemented E-Verify mandate, with strict enforcement mechanisms and no loopholes, would provide that discouragement. In fact, the best evidence for E-Verify’s effectiveness is that the business lobby opposes it — not merely on the pretext of administrative burden, but explicitly because E-Verify would make it difficult for them to hire illegal workers.
Without E-Verify as a tool to counter illegal immigration to his state, DeSantis has pursued lesser measures – filing lawsuits, limiting state support for migrant shelters, and flying migrants to Martha’s Vineyard before they could come to Florida. While the governor’s tenacity is admirable, these efforts have only a modest impact on the illegal immigration problem. That’s why it’s so encouraging to see him trying again for universal E-Verify.
What happens next could have national repercussions. If universal E-Verify passes in Florida, and if DeSantis trumpets that success in a future presidential campaign, E-Verify could return to the center of Republicans’ immigration-enforcement agenda. (The Trump administration regrettably did not push hard for E-Verify.) If, on the other hand, an historically popular governor holding a legislative supermajority is unable to get universal E-Verify written into law, then the business lobby’s hold over the Republican Party will seem practically unshakeable.
To make the case for E-Verify over the coming weeks, it’s important to allay fears that Florida’s economy will crumble when fewer illegal workers are available. For one thing, any E-Verify mandate would likely apply only to new hires, discouraging future illegal immigration while giving employers time both to shift their labor recruitment practices and to consider mechanization.
Furthermore, reducing job competition could benefit U.S.-born workers. Among Florida’s working-age, U.S.-born adults with less than a bachelor’s degree, a remarkable 31 percent are not in the labor force — up from 24 percent in 2007, the year prior to the Great Recession. Perhaps some of these missing workers could step in to jobs that would normally go to illegal immigrants.
Granted, some less-educated Americans struggle with personal issues such as drug abuse and welfare dependency that make them difficult to employ. Reducing the supply of illegal-immigrant workers, however, could be the impetus for policy-makers to tackle those social problems head-on. With a concerted effort born of necessity, it’s not unreasonable to believe that labor-force participation among the U.S.-born could rise at least back to pre-Great Recession levels.