President Obama Comments on E-Verify

During a recent White House press conference, President Obama was asked whether he would veto a mandatory E-Verify bill that did not include immigration reform provisions. Without directly answering the question, Obama stated, “We may not be able to get everything that I would like to see in a package, but we have to have a balanced package.” Though Obama acknowledged that the E-Verify employment authorization system can be “an important [immigration] enforcement tool,” he added a caveat – “if it’s not riddled with errors.”

Skepticism surrounding E-Verify’s accuracy is not new. The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services have been gradually making improvements to the E-Verify system, many of which are intended to improve its accuracy rate.

The need to attain an acceptable level of accuracy grows as the number of E-Verify users expands. Computerworld reports that more than 250,000 U.S. employers have already signed up for E-Verify, with another 1,300 new businesses enrolling each week. State and local legislation mandating E-Verify use is continually rising. Additionally, in June 2011 two bills were introduced in Congress that would require all employers to use E-Verify.