Mandatory E-Verify would help U.S. workers

The June unemployment numbers are bleak. Joblessness rose to 9.2 percent nationally. That means 14 million Americans can't find jobs, and that number doesn't include additional millions who are underemployed. Few new jobs were created during the last reporting period. It is clear all too many Americans are hurting.

CBS News reports devastating statistics for black Americans who are living with Depression-era unemployment rates.

In the black community the jobless rate has risen from 14.7 percent to 16.2 percent. Teenagers are in the same predicament. Indeed, joblessness is high among every class of worker.

And consider this shocking fact reported by CBS: A majority of graduating high school students does not have marketable job skills.

In light of all this, it is upsetting to witness the federal government's failure to stop employers from displacing U.S. workers with illegal workers. Employers have illegally taken jobs out of the hands of at least 8 million American workers. By the way, CBS reports only 4 percent of those jobs are in agriculture, perhaps the only sector where legal guest workers with H-2A visas are really needed.

Most of our displaced workers don't have a college education -- and less-educated workers constitute a third of our work force. So why is our federal government abandoning them? If we fail these Americans and they can't find jobs to support themselves, the welfare, food stamp, health care and other taxpayer-supported services will soon be strained to the breaking point.

Help, however, could be on the way. Requiring the mandatory use of the online E-Verify system protects the American worker and also causes more and more of the 12 to 15 million illegal workers here to self-deport themselves. Experience shows that if a worker cannot explain to an employer why he does not have proper legal documentation, he simply moves to a more permissive state or back to his home country.

More than 260,000 businesses at more than 1 million worksites currently use the E-Verify system found on the Department of Homeland Security website. This feature allows an employer, within minutes, to verify the legal status of a potential new employee.

Louisiana just became the 15th state to require the mandatory use of E-Verify, because it is the best tool available to prevent jobs from going to illegal aliens. Many of the E-Verify states, by the way, have also passed laws establishing stiff fines and jail time for public contractors and private employers who knowingly hire illegal workers.

E-Verify can be even more effective when coupled with another system to identify and remove illegal workers who have committed identity fraud. (By the way, the term "undocumented" workers is ludicrous, They are often the most "documented," except that the documents are all fake!)

A national Social Security No-Match program, coupled with a national mandatory E-Verify program for employers, would put millions of Americans back to work soon. If a Social Security number is bogus or was stolen from a legal resident, the illegal worker is busted. The Obama administration supports the E-Verify program for businesses on a voluntary basis. But why not the Social Security No-Match program?

Why not make both required nationally by law? Legislation is being forged in Congress to make this happen. Let's just hope there will be enough citizen pressure to generate bipartisan support to enact this legislation, and to send the bill to President Obama's desk for his signature.

Americans want action. Most are not interested in blaming the previous administration. Let's face facts: The Obama "jobs stimulus" spending didn't work.

I wasn't alive in the 1930s and there has been serious debate whether such a spending spree worked during President Franklin Roosevelt's administration, but we know for sure it has not worked this time. It has only made our nation drown in debt.

If official unemployment figures hover at around 9 percent or even 8 percent, with many Americans hurting and piling up more personal debt, it is hard to see how the president can be re-elected, no matter who the Republican Party picks as its presidential nominee.

E-Verify, however, can help get the unemployment numbers for many unemployed American citizens going in the right direction.

J.C. Watts (JCWatts01@jcwatts.com), chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group, is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. He writes twice monthly for the Review-Journal.