Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I rise to speak on another amendment. I spoke on Senator Vitter's amendment yesterday, and I spoke in support of it. I will now speak on the Sessions amendment.

I rise in support of the Sessions amendment to extend the E-Verify Program for a period of 5 years. The E-Verify Program is an effective Web-based tool that provides employers with a process for the purpose of verifying the Social Security numbers and, at the same time, for the main purpose of determining the legal status of newly hired employees.

As my colleagues know, it is unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ aliens not eligible to work in the United States. Under current law, if the documents provided by an employee reasonably appear on their face to be genuine, then the employer has met the obligation to review the worker's documents. Unfortunately, counterfeit documents and stolen identities have made a mockery of this law. But with the E-Verify Program, employers can electronically verify a new hire's employment authorization through the Social Security Administration and, if necessary, follow it up with the Department of Homeland Security databases.

E-Verify has been an extremely successful program for employers who are seeking to comply with the law. The program is voluntary and free for all employers. Right now, over 100,000 employers have signed up for the program, and, in addition, each week more than 2,000 employers sign up.

E-Verify has a proven track record--more than 5 million queries by employers were made last year and, of those, 96.1 percent were verified automatically.

The small percentage of applicants who receive a tentative nonconfirmation must sort out their records with the Social Security Administration. I would think if the Social Security Administration has bad information about you, you would want to clear that up for sure anyway. Many times this is a simple misunderstanding with the Social Security Administration or a case in which records were not updated. In the event a person receives a tentative nonconfirmation after his employment application, that person can still continue to work and cannot be fired.

The Sessions amendment would extend the E-Verify Program for 5 more years. Now, frankly, I would like to see more reforms to the E-Verify Program. For example, I would like to make E-Verify mandatory for all businesses. I would like employers to check all their employees through E-Verify, not just new hires. I would also like to see the program made a permanent provision in our immigration laws. But for now, I am happy to support this first baby step in extending E-Verify for 5 years.

There is a bottom line to everything we do around here, and the bottom line is that this amendment is a jobs amendment. Our economy is on the skids. Americans are losing their jobs. The E-Verify Program will help stimulate the economy by preserving jobs for a legal workforce. It will help root out illegal workers who are taking jobs from Americans. We need the E-Verify Program to encourage employers to use the system to prevent them from hiring foreign labor that has come here illegally.

I wish to make clear this has nothing to do with whether we have people coming to this country. It has nothing to do with whether we have people coming to this country to work. It only has to do with laws being followed--following the rule of law--to make sure people are working here legally and are conforming with our laws.

That is all this is about, and E-Verify is a process--not mandatory, but a process to help people who are employers to verify whether the people who apply for the jobs are here legally and are registered with our Social Security system in a legal way.

I urge my colleagues, then, to support the Sessions amendment. Of course I appreciate very much the leadership of Senator Sessions in this E-Verify Program extension for 5 years, which is what the amendment calls for.

I yield the floor and I don't see anybody yet ready to speak so I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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