Farmers dependent on immigrant labor worry about push to make e-Verify program mandatory

Some Republican lawmakers are pushing to make the federal employment verification system mandatory and many "are calling on the Obama administration to step up workplace raids to find and arrest illegal immigrants," Matt Kennard of the Financial Times reports. That concerns farmers who depend on immigrant labor. (Read more)

Many farmers fear that a mandatory program, without legislation to create a path to citizenship for immigrant workers, would wipe out the nation's agricultural work force, Jason Hoppin of the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports. "To say that we're going to use e-Verify without giving you a legal means to citizenship, the message there is, 'We want consumers to buy foreign food,'" Thomas Nassif, president and chief executive officer of the Irvine, Calif.-based Western Growers Association told Hoppin.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas, a leading supporter of expanding e-Verify, said at a hearing in January, "Statements that Americans are not willing to do these jobs demean the hardworking Americans who actually do this work on a daily basis. Citizens and legal immigrants should not be forced to compete with illegal workers for jobs." (Read more)