E-Verify for contractors delayed by lawsuit until Feb. 20
January 16, 2009 by Jim GiulianoPosted in: Employment law, Hiring, Immigration, Special Report, policies
A lawsuit filed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Society for Human Resource Management, among others, will delay the required use of E-Verify for federal contractors, and could be a sign of opposition to the required use of the program by all employers. On January 9, the Chamber of Commerce announced an accord reached with the federal government to delay the effective date of the E-Verify federal contractor regulation until February 20 — instead of the original deadline of January 15.
The announcement of the temporary suspension came after the Chamber and SHRM filed a December 23 lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Civilian Agency Acquisition Council. The suit charged that the E-Verify regulations violate laws against mandating “any person or other entity to participate in a pilot program” such as E-Verify. The federal government has argued the rule doesn’t violate any statutes because employers are not required to be government contractors or subcontractors.
Still, the Chamber and SHRM he plaintiffs contend that the E-Verify requirement:
- violates at least two federal acts
- exceeds the statutory authority of the E-Verify program
- is unconstitutional, and
- wasn’t implemented under procedures required in the Federal Register.
What’s it all mean, especially for employers who aren’t federal contractors? No one knows for sure until everything’s played out in the courts, but it seems likely that if the Chamber of Commerce and SHRM are successful in getting the E-Verify requirment overturned for contractors, there’s little hope that the program will be made mandatory for other employers.
Tags: chamber of commerce, Department of Homeland Security, e-verify, SHRM
January 19th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Shall we say a proofreader is needed for this article? Beside this annoyance, we have been using E-Verify as a private organization and love it. We feel that E-Verify captures the spirit of the law regarding eligible employment, and that employers (federal or not) who continue fighting this program are actually for lazy laws which encourage illegal employement. As an example, our applications have decreased by 75% once the word spread throughout the community that we had to “let-go” ineligible employees caught by E-Verify. We did have a couple cases where employees were tentative non-confirmation, visited the local SSA, and were still approved as eligible employees. So far, this process has worked very well for our business and we encourage people around the nation to use this tool to hire eligible U.S. people.
February 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 pm
I don’t understand this resistance to verifying whether a person is able to work in this country legally. This is just another example of helping contractors and sub-contractors continue to hire illegal immigrants and circumvent wage and labor laws in the process. The economy is in the dumps and huge layoffs are currently occuring. If there is an economic stimulus and there will be all of these construction jobs created, contractors and subcontractors will continue to do what they have been doing–hire illegal immigrants to work on the government stimulus jobs. We should not be providing full employment for Mexico. There are American citizens who should be hired for those stimulus jobs. A lot of those Chamber of Commerce members are probably contractors and subcontractors themselves and are looking out for their own interest and not the interest of the American people. Not looking out for the interest of the American people has been a problem for the past several years.
February 5th, 2009 at 8:06 am
I completely agree with you Mary!