E-Verify a powerful hiring tool

The number of companies using E-Verify, a voluntary federal program that tells businesses whether prospective employees are in the U.S. legally, is expanding rapidly. That's good news in the battle to get a handle on illegal immigration. The bad news? Even with that expansion, E-Verify is only being utilized by a small percentage of employers.

The majority of illegal immigration to the United States is spurred by the demand for cheap labor, and the ability of undocumented workers to make and save more money here than they can elsewhere. If E-Verify enables employers and the government to remove the incentive to migrate here illegally, much of the problem is likely to disappear.

E-Verify use is rare among businesses because it is generally not required, and because, for some, illegal labor is part of the business plan. Hiring the workers E-Verify can ferret out is illegal, but the penalties aren't always stiff enough, or enforced enough, to change behavior.

There is tremendous demand for labor provided by undocumented workers. Shut off demand by fining and prosecuting businesses hiring undocumented workers and fewer will come here. For that to happen, employers must face serious consequences if caught employing illegals without using E-Verify to check their status, consequences that mostly aren't imposed now. This would also provide a safety net for employers who, even if they are fooled into hiring undocumented workers, shouldn't be blamed if they submitted them to E-Verify.

Then, some employers would likely pay the better wages and benefits legal residents demand, and pass on increased costs to consumers. Others, particularly in agriculture, might see they couldn't compete in global markets paying America-style wages and change their crop, or close up shop.

Update processes for legal immigration

To ease this transition and limit consumer price increases and business bankruptcies, one of the most important things the United States can do is create processes for legal immigration - guest, semipermanent and permanent - that work smoothly and are easily navigated by employers and prospective immigrants, things we don't have now.

Most undocumented workers want to be here legally. Many of them fulfill meaningful roles in our society and markets, or else they would not be able to make a living here.

Our immigration problem can be addressed, but not painlessly, and the real solution won't be a wall at the border, even though a wall might be part of it. A wall won't kill demand for cheap labor, and as long as that demand is so strong, the supply will keep materializing in response to it.

The growth of E-Verify is crucial. Requiring employers to use it, harshly penalizing those who hire illegal workers without availing themselves of it, and pairing it with a workable legal immigration process would bring real progress.

Immigrants aren't streaming into our country because we don't want or need them, but because we do. Now we just have to find a way to make the relationship work.