AZ Representative Gabrielle Gifford wants to kill the E-Verify system
to send an email to Rep. Gabrielle Gifford with your thoughts........
http://giffords.house.gov/contact/email/
SYLVESTER: E-Verify is a voluntary system used by more than 60,000 employers to check if workers are eligible to work in the United States. The pilot program is set to expire in November and there is a proposal in Congress to replace it with a system currently used to track down deadbeat parents. Backers of the change say more than six million employers already use that system.
REP. GABRIELLE GIFFORDS (D), ARIZONA: We see that the E-Verify system is currently in place,
is cumbersome, it's burdensome and it's unreliable.
SYLVESTER: But critics insist scrapping E-Verify would weaken efforts to stop the hiring of
illegal aliens. Among the criticisms, it would gut state employment verification laws like
the one in Arizona that require employers check that workers are legally eligible for employment and would restrict information sharing between the Social Security Administration and immigration enforcement officials, making it harder to crack down on employers who hire illegal workers. NUMBERSUSA (ph), which favors tighter controls on illegal immigration insist E-Verify is reliable and says Congress should expand the program and require
employers use it.
ROSEMARY JENKS, NUMBERSUSA: This is a government program that works, and yet we're talking about dismantling it and re-creating it in another agency. It just doesn't make sense.
SYLVESTER: Representatives Ken Calvert and Heath Schuler (ph) are offering bills that require mandatory checks through E-Verify.
REP. KEN CALVERT (R), CALIFORNIA: People in this country demand to know that people do not use fraudulent documents in seeking a job. Right now everybody knows that people are using fraudulent Social Security numbers in order to obtain work in this country illegally.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SYLVESTER: Now the Democratic leadership so far has blocked legislation known as the Save Act (ph) from coming up for a vote. The Save Act (ph) includes those provisions that would expand E-Verify. And if nothing is done within six months then the pilot program sunsets and there will be no employment verification system at all. Lou.
DOBBS: Well, who sponsored the E-Verify, the new E-Verify legislation?
SYLVESTER: It's Representative Sam Johnson, also Representative Gabrielle Gifford, she's also a co-sponsor. There are a number of other representatives as well.
DOBBS: Let's get everyone's sponsors on our Web site and let everybody know how they can contact them and also of course Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House because this is an outrage. What they are trying to do is to stop the efforts of the local and state level to curtail illegal immigration in using E-Verify. They are trying to get E-Verify to go away, because as you reported, it works. This is absolutely shameless what is happening. Is there any -- is there any sense of shame on the part of any of these people pushing this legislation?
SYLVESTER: Shame is not something that you see that often on Capitol Hill; I'll tell you that, Lou. But I do want to mention though in Arizona where they have made it mandatory for employers to check the worker status, there has been a difference where you see people are leaving, illegal aliens are leaving that state and that was the intent of that law.
