Model Legislative Language

Before the e-VeriFILE program, local and state governments that wanted to mandate the use of the federal E-Verify program for contractors and vendors generally required businesses to submit an affidavit attesting to the use of the E-Verify program for all new hires. Critics complained that the affidavit added to the procurement process overhead, required additional record-keeping for both the government entity and the private employer, and necessitated an oversight mechanism.

By substituting the requirement that the private employer be registered with a public access national database, state and local governments have a much simpler solution.

Simpler Is Better

Representation that a business entity is in compliance with a local or state government's hiring guidelines is no more difficult than that the procurement office queries the vendor's business name in e-VeriFILE's national public-access database.

The e-VeriFILE program makes it especially easy for any legislative body to mandate compliance with federal immigration and labor laws by eliminating the need for the state or municipality to set up verification procedures, or, in fact, to do anything (or spend anything) at all.

The legislative body simply mandates that any vendor or contractor doing business with the state or local government be registered with the e-VeriFILE program. There is no cost to the employer, and because we maintain a publicly accessible database of all registered employers, the public itself provides a strong incentive for employers to want to participate.

Disincentive To Cheat

With the e-VeriFILE program, employers face a more powerful disincentive to cheat—to claim participation falsely—than exists with some kind of affidavit requirement. Under the e-VeriFILE program, because all participating employers are registered and listed in our public directory, and are provided with colorful easy-to-spot decals, members of the public, competitors, and even employees, all become the invisible oversight committee.

Legal Hiring

Congressional inaction in the face of a national immigration crisis has left states and local governments struggling to come to grips with the myriad problems caused by illegal hiring.

There is a lot of confusion and misinformation surrounding the issue of local immigration law enforcement. State and local authorities are understandably hesitant to undertake efforts in the face of strong pressure to maintain the status quo and threats of legal action from those who profit from illegal immigration.

However, the cost to communities of illegal hiring is substantial and growing; citizens are demanding something be done.

State and local governments are caught in the middle.

A growing number of legislative bodies are discovering that a good first step in any attempt to address the problem of illegal hiring is to require all companies with which they do business have a legal work force.

This is accomplished legislatively by mandating use of the federal government's E-Verify system on the state or local level just as it is mandated on the federal level for federal contractors.