Bush orders federal contractors to use e-Verify

The Bush administration finally took serious action to have the federal government comply with its own immigration laws. George Bush amended an executive order, largely ignored since Bill Clinton issued it, to require that all contractors doing business with DC use the e-Verify system for all hiring. It will triple the number of employers using the system:

President Bush has ordered federal contractors to participate in the Department of Homeland Security’s electronic system for verifying the immigration status of their workers, greatly expanding the reach of the administration’s crackdown on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

An executive order, signed by the president on Friday and announced on Monday, requires federal contractors to use the system, known as E-Verify, to check immigration status when they hire new workers or start work under government contracts.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the measure would affect at least several hundred thousand workers a year nationwide. The status checks apply to all workers.

The order expands the E-Verify program, which has been the target of criticism and lawsuits by employers’ groups and advocates for immigrants who say the Social Security database it draws upon to check workers’ status is riddled with errors that could lead to legal workers’ being fired or rejected for employment.

This is the first time that participation in the program, which Congress established in 1996 as a voluntary system, has become mandatory for any large group of employers.

The ACLU complained yesterday about the mandatory nature of the order. Congress established the system as a voluntary method of confirming the work status of employees, and they claim that the White House is doing an “end run” around Congress with the executive order. However, the federal government has a long history of imposing hiring rules on federal contractors, most of which the ACLU cheered rather than jeered. As a customer of these contractors, the government certainly has the right to establish conditions for contracts, which companies can choose to forego by passing on the business offered by government.

The reason the ACLU objects to the executive order is that it works around a lawsuit they brought against a prior rule change that tried to accomplish the same thing. A San Francisco judge blocked that attempt, and the ACLU will now have to rethink its approach to block the executive order.

Arizona required its employers to use the e-Verify system beginning this year in its own crackdown on illegal immigrants. So far, the program appears to work well, and it has had the desired results. Undocumented workers have begun to flee the state, some into neighboring states but most out of the country. That has had an economic effect on Arizona as rental properties go empty and neighborhood businesses close from lack of clientele, but thus far Arizonans appear satisfied with its overall impact.

This order makes a lot of sense. The federal government should not hire illegal aliens, directly or indirectly. If we are to enforce employer sanctions, the first place for enforcement should be those contractors who get money from Washington. The only problem with this order is that it should have come as soon as e-Verify was established.