The program quickly confirms 99.5% of work-eligible employees. Even though E-Verify is not mandatory, many employers willingly use the program. More than 250,000 American employers currently use it, and an average of 1,300 new businesses sign up each week.

Immigration: E-Verify helps employers weed out illegal hires – latimes.com

The primary complaint from the business community, as exemplified by the comments of my friend from the Gwinnett Chamber, is that the E-Verify requirement will place an unreasonable burden on Georgia businesses as they struggle to emerge from the recession:

“We’re coming out of [a] recession, and businesses are doing all they can do right now to stay afloat,” said Jann Moore, senior director of public policy and education for the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce. “To turn around and put the responsibility of another policy on business is the wrong thing to do. The timing could not be worse.”

In truth, the fears are completely unjustified. First, the compromise reached on Thursday exempts smaller businesses for which, arguably, E-Verify would cause the greatest burden. As I will explain in a minute, even the smallest businesses can comply with the law with minimal hassle.

Second, businesses of any size can reduce the actual cost of compliance to a couple of minutes and less than $6 per new hire, a far cry from the $127 per new employee claimed by the business lobbyists.

In 2007, I founded Verify I-9 LLC, which is a Designated Agent of the E-Verify program. In short, we conduct verifications for our business clients. We have hundreds of clients from many states including Georgia.

Our average client employs fewer than four workers and hire no more than one or two new employees a year. But even for our larger clients, participation in E-Verify is essentially hassle-free.

Verify I-9 currently charges no setup fee and no monthly fee; in other words, it costs nothing to enroll in E-Verify. By using a Designated Agent (aka Employer Agent), the employer avoids the tutorials and mastery tests that are required before access to the system is granted. By hiring us, the employer saves three to six hours of labor cost on the front end.

E-Verify adds just a couple of minutes to the hiring process—the time that it takes to drop the I-9 form into a fax machine. We submit the information from the I-9 to E-Verify and return the response by email, usually within one business day. The employer writes a verification number on the I-9 form and files it away.

It really is as simple as that.

Our charge for this service is currently as low as $5.95, and no more than $9.90 per new hire. Employers that enroll directly can use the system for free.

Over 400,000 businesses are enrolled in E-Verify with over 1,000 new enrollees each week. Hundreds of Georgia businesses participate including Gwinnett-based E.R. Snell Construction, Cash Register & POS Systems Support, Next Step Electrical Services, Surig & Son Specialized Masonry, Drywall & Acoustic Contractors and Phillip Blount & Associates.

When you hear the business community, liberal politicians and pro-amnesty advocates foretelling the demise of Georgia’s economy, know that the complaints are unfounded and amount to nothing more than posturing to preserve the status quo.

What do you think? Do you support Georgia’s new E-Verify requirement? Would you be more likely to patronize a business that checks its new hires? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Georgia lawmakers pass illegal immigration crackdown  | ajc.com

Then why are you spending money to protect illegal aliens and the employers who hire them?

The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act went into effect in 2007. It required that all local governments use the E-Verify system to make sure that they were not hiring illegal workers and to use the federal SAVE system to verify that applicants for various public benefits including business licenses were eligible to receive them.

The law also mandated that employers providing products and services to the government– construction companies, landscape services, road builders, etc.– enroll in E-Verify to ensure that tax dollars are not paid to illegal workers.

Numerous groups lobbied against the law’s passage including the ACLU and GALEO, the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. Two of the most influential lobbyists, the GMA and the ACCG, were able to weaken the bill to the point that there were no penalties for violations. Those groups have opposed every effort to strengthen the laws regulating the employers of illegal aliens including this session’s Senate Bill 3.

Who are the GMA and ACCG? Just two of the most powerful lobbying groups at the State Capitol; the lobbyists that you are funding to oppose tougher sanctions on governments and employers who violate Georgia’s immigration-related laws.

Most Georgia cities belong to the Georgia Municipal Association, an umbrella group that provides “tools and services” to aid local governments. Your county is a member of a comparable group with a similar purpose, the Association County Commissioners of Georgia. Both groups have a team of lobbyists pestering State Reps and Senators under the Gold Dome to amend and pass laws that benefit them or, at best, don’t restrict them too much.

The member cities and counties pay annual dues to the organizations; tens of thousands of dollars from each to fund the organizations’ activities. That money comes from you, the taxpayer, “the usual victims in illegal immigration” says D.A. King, the president of the Dustin Inman Society.

King asks, “Why does a bill designed to protect legal workers on public works contract have a thumbs down from GMA Inc.? Why did it take a 2006 Georgia law to make Georgia’s 535 municipalities begin using E-Verify? Why isn’t GMA/ACCG leading the way in protecting the American worker? Why aren’t all 535 municipalities and 159 counties still not using the federal SAVE program as required by the 2006 state law?”

Good questions… questions that you should be asking your City Council and your County Commission. While you’re at it, ask them why you are paying to fund a political effort that is diametrically opposed to your own position on illegal immigration.

The article also serves to highlight the need for a more comprehensive local immigration enforcement plan. Every offender detained under 287-g constitutes an unjustified burden on Gwinnett taxpayers, even if they only spend a couple of nights in jail before being deported.

A better approach would be to adopt a local version of the three-year-old Arizona law that requires businesses to enroll in the free, federal E-Verify program to qualify for a business license. If Gwinnett’s leaders eliminate the primary reason for illegal immigrants to live in Gwinnett—jobs—they minimize the impact of illegal aliens and their families on publicly-funded services including the jail.

Still, according to The Times’ analysis, 200,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia are driving to work daily. For them, the new laws mean any police stop, whether for a violation that caused an accident, or for a broken taillight or another driver’s mistake, can lead to deportation. Since 2006, thousands of immigrants, mostly from Latin America, have been deported from Georgia after traffic violations, often shaking up long-settled families.

Illegal immigrants who drive risk more than a ticket – Hawaii News – Staradvertiser.com

Ironically, [Erik] Meder said that in cases like Gwinnett’s, 287(g) has served to keep undocumented immigrants in place, especially in a sour economy.

“One consequence of the ramped-up enforcement is to trap a population in this country,” he said. “People who would have left two or three years ago with every intention of returning are afraid of leaving, because they don’t think they’ll get back in. It’s a labor-driven market.”

I do not know that there is any documented proof of Meder’s claims but, in Gwinnett where jail officials estimate that 75% of the immigrant population is here illegally, it behooves the County Commission to consider other, more effective and less costly immigration enforcement efforts.

The rest of the article here.