Without federal mandate, E-Verify would put Idaho at a disadvantage | Opinion

E-Verify, the federal web-based program that confirms someone’s employment eligibility, will be and should be a part of federal immigration reforms moving forward.

The problem is that it’s not a federal requirement for all private employers yet.

And so it would put Idaho farmers and other employers at a disadvantage if the Idaho Legislature were to pass House Bill 704, which would require employers to use E-Verify to confirm every employee’s legal employment status as a condition of employment.

“If the state of Idaho creates a patchwork of E-Verify regulations, employers risk losing access to a workforce, and that could cause significant harm,” Rick Naerebout, CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, told the Idaho House Business Committee members on Feb. 23. “That’s why we urge this legislation to be put on hold until President Trump and his administration complete their work and solve this at the federal level.”

Idaho has become the third-largest dairy state in the country. In the 1990s, dairy farmers fled California and came to Idaho, in part, to escape overregulation.

Want to see the same thing happen to Idaho? Require E-Verify for the Idaho dairy industry, where it’s estimated that about half of on-farm labor is unauthorized.

There’s a valid point to be made that unauthorized workers drive down wages, and that if employers would only pay more, they would see more authorized, American workers apply. (We have our doubts that American workers are in a rush to milk cows or travel from region to region to sort potatoes, pick lettuce or harvest strawberries.)

But let’s assume that the premise is true. So now, Idaho dairies and farms are paying $20 or $25 an hour or more for labor, driving up the cost of their products and cutting into their profits.

If only Idaho businesses have to bear the burden of using E-Verify for every employee, while other states ignore it, watch as Idaho businesses flee to other states that don’t mandate E-Verify.

We support immigration reform, and we recognize that E-Verify will be a part of that solution.

But House Bill 704 is an oversimplification of the issue and is an oversimplified reaction to the problem.

Idaho employers, including dairy, other ag, construction and hospitality employers, already require employees to fill out I9 forms, just like all other employers do.

As Naerebout pointed out, “We don’t believe it should be on the employer to verify legal status of an individual in country. That should fall on the government, not an employer.”

We would also like to point out that House Bill 704 would apply to all employers, not just ag and dairy and construction.

The estimated unauthorized workforce in Idaho is about 30,000-35,000, according to a recent study by the University of Idaho.

That’s small compared with the 1 million worker labor force in Idaho.

But the number of unauthorized workers is concentrated in the agricultural, construction and hospitality industries, having a potentially devastating effect on those vital segments of Idaho’s economy.

House Bill 704 would require all employers to use E-Verify. That massive effort to root out an estimated 3% of the workforce is outsized and inefficient.

Further, the solution is not to hunt down these employees, round them up and ship them out.

The solution is to make these employees legal.

That’s what U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson’s Farm Workforce Modernization Act would do, by expanding the H-2A visa program to allow year-round employees.

The bottom line is that Idaho, which has among the strongest economies in the nation, needs and benefits from these workers. We should be doing everything we can to keep them working — in Idaho.

Not chasing them down and running them out of the state.

And we should not be putting Idaho businesses at a competitive disadvantage at the same time.

Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, assistant editor Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.