Another testimonial (I googled the writer’s name and this seems to be genuine):
Mark,
I read with interest your brief article on e-verify. I want to assure you from personal experience E-VERIFY WORKS.
I am employed by a fairly significant construction company in the [name redacted] area of Texas. We employ on the order of 475 people. A few months ago, in April, we received a letter from the INS [sic] saying they were going to audit our employees documentation provided when we hired them. We convened a meeting of our managers to discuss this. It seems that our H/R department had started going through our employment records and found some “suspicious” information; i.e. they believed that at least some of the identification that our employees had provided was fraudulent.
We discussed our options; do we tell our employees what is happening and give them the chance to “voluntarily terminate” their employment, or do we just turn over all our records and let the chips fall where they may. Some of our employees had been with us almost 20 years (i.e. shortly after the “last” amnesty). We decided it was only fair to tell our employees we were being audited, and that the information they had furnished when they applied would be turned over to the INS unless they chose to terminate their employment.
Personally, I felt my division had nothing to worry about. The previous H/R manager had “verified” that all my employees had legal status less than 2 years earlier. One of the other division managers, of Hispanic descent, basically told me I had no clue. His estimate was that between 1/3 and 1/2 of our employees were working under fraudulent documents.
When we explained to our employees the audit we were going through, and gave them the opportunity to voluntarily terminate their employment, they scattered like flies. There wasn’t the least bit of hesitation – they left within MINUTES of being told.
We suffered a setback, but we recovered. We immediately instituted a policy of utilizing e-verify for all replacements. We were surprised by how many people with fraudulent documents tried to get through anyway. It took a couple of months, but we recovered.
All I can say is E-VERIFY WORKS. I firmly believe if ALL EMPLOYERS were REQUIRED to use it, the illegal aliens would voluntarily self-deport. They would have no choice if there were no jobs available.
We need to make this mandatory.
An additional reason to make E-Verify mandatory for all new hires is to level the playing field between legitimate employers like this and crooked ones that knowingly hire illegals — because right now it’s hard to tell the difference.