One of Rick Scott’s first acts as governor was to sign an executive order requiring all state agencies (and perhaps more importantly, companies that contract with state agencies) to screen employees using the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system, which allows employers to ensure that people they hire are eligible to work in the United States.
Other states, including Georgia, are weighing similar measures, and according to the program’s home page, E-Verify is already required for some employers, including some state and federal contractors.
But another newly elected governor, Republican-turned-independent Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, announced in his inaugural address that one of his first acts as governor would be rescinding his state’s E-Verify requirement:
However well intentioned it may have been, it has caused needless anxiety within our Latino community without demonstrating any progress on illegal immigration, an issue I strongly believe must be solved at the federal level.
Each of the existing immigration enforcement mechanisms seems to have its critics and its loopholes. E-Verify’s main weakness, according to a handy breakdown from the Arizona Republic, is that it can’t detect identity theft.
