Legislation introduced to make E-Verify mandatory

WASHINGTON – House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith has introduced his legislation to make the E-Verify program mandatory. E-Verify is an online, legal-employment-status verification system created by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

A bill mandating national use, without a solution for the estimated 7 million undocumented workers currently employed in the United States, would significantly challenge not just the nursery and landscape industry, but the slow and delicate recovery of America’s economy, according to the American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA). Agricultural and seasonal employers would be hardest hit.

ANLA has put into place a grassroots program involving fly-ins, lobbying events held in Washington; fly-outs, issue briefings held around the country to prepare industry leaders to make local visits to their congressional representatives, and traditional grassroots message campaigns.

Craig Regelbrugge, ANLA’s vice-president for government relations and research, has spoken with Rep. Smith’s legal counsel regarding this legislation. “There is acknowledgement that the labor-intensive agriculture community would be uniquely affected by this legislation,” Regelbrugge said. “While several considerations have been alluded too, none of them offer the guarantee of a legal and reliably available workforce that our industry, and American agriculture, need to remain in business.”

Regelbrugge said industry leaders should deliver a strong message to their congressional representatives that mandatory use of E-Verify alone will directly impact both their business’ contribution to the local economy and the many American workers they directly and indirectly employ. “Expansion of E-Verify must be done concurrently with broader reforms to America’s broken immigration system,” Regelbrugge said.

The full details of ANLA’s summer grassroots Fly-in and Fly-out program will be available shortly. “In the meantime,” Regelbrugge said. “Stay up-to-the-minute on the issue and make the time to reach out to your elected leaders in Congress.”

ANLA members may contact Craig Regelbrugge at cregelbrugge@anla.org for more information.