Gallegly Praises Supreme Court E-Verify Ruling

U.S. Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-CA), congressman for the 24th District—which includes Moorpark, much of the rest of Ventura County and part of Santa Barbara County—has issued praise for the U.S. Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling upholding the state of Arizona’s right to require employers to use E-Verify. Gallegly is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement.

E-Verify is an employee verification system that ensures employees have a legal right to work in the United States by matching a person’s name, Social Security number and birth date against Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security databases.

“It is unfortunate that states have to pass laws to protect jobs for the legal workers in their jurisdictions because the federal government has refused to do so,” Gallegly said in a written statement Thursday. “While this ruling is a victory for the people of Arizona, until the federal government makes E-Verify mandatory, illegal immigrants will just move to other states that do not require E-Verify.”

In the statement, Gallegly called E-Verify “verifiably more effective and efficient and less time-consuming and costly for employers” than I-9 forms, the current method of checking employment eligibility.

The statement went on to claim E-Verify lowers costs for employers and it is race neutral. Although the program is not mandatory, more than 250,000 American employers voluntarily use E-Verify and an average of 1,300 new businesses sign up each week.

U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, U.S. Rep. Ken Calvert of California and Gallegly are drafting a bill to expand E-Verify.

E-Verify grew from a program Gallegly passed into law in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. It was then called the Basic Pilot Program.