Is Immigration Verification Bad for Moorpark Businesses?

A new bill drafted by the House of Representatives last week intends to strengthen a 17-year-old mechanism for verifying the immigration status of new hires across the country.    

E-Verify is an online tool run by U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services that checks social security and alien identification numbers against Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to verify immigration status. 

This verification process would be mandatory for all businesses under "The Legal Workforce Act," according to the House Judiciary Committee.

The National Restaurant Association supports the bill, but wants to see it done right, "Which is why the feedback we’re getting is so important to share with lawmakers during the decision making process,” said Angelo Amador, vice president of labor and workforce, in a statement.

Amador told the Los Angeles Times he thought having a mandatory verification system in place at restaurants would discourage those workers without proper documentation from applying, potentially causing labor shortages. 

The group partnered with immigration reform organization ImmigrationWorks USA to conduct a national survey of close to 800 people in the restaurant business and concluded: 

• 80 percent of restaurant operators who use E-Verify would recommend it to a colleague 
• About 66 percent said they would use it voluntarily 
• 79 percent said the program was 100-percent accurate 
• 27 percent said they would use it because it is mandated in the states where they do business 
• 23 percent of responding restaurant operators would use the program to check the documentation of newly hired immigrant employees
• 2 percent said they use it because they do business with the federal government

There are approximately 11.1 million immigrants living illegally in the U.S., according to the Pew Research Center, and approximately 2 million living in California, the Department of Homeland Security estimates. 

Do you think having a mandatory immigration status verification system in place would be a good or bad thing for restaurants and other Moorpark businesses? Which businesses do you think would be hit hardest in the city? Tell us in the comments section below.