Contact Oregon Legislature in regard to E-Verify‏

Alert date: 
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Alert body: 

OFIR members and supporters:

In February 2012, the Oregon legislature will convene for a five-week session. During this time, legislators will seek to rectify a growing gap between state-government expenses and the taxes needed to fund them.

One of the main reasons for growing state-government expenses: the presence of 175,000-plus illegal aliens in our state. This drains state coffers in two main ways:

(a) The citizens and legal residents displaced from jobs by Oregon’s estimated 130,000 job-holding illegal aliens draw payments from the state’s unemployment insurance fund. In this time of recession, the fund’s payouts are substantial. In one recent week, for example — Oct 2 to Oct. 8 — more than $33 million in benefits were paid from the fund to unemployed Oregonians.

(b) Last year, the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated that illegal aliens and their children cost Oregon’s state and local governments more than $700 million a year in education, law-enforcement, and social services.

There is something that Legislators can do this session that could help a great deal. Introduce, support and pass a mandatory E-Verify bill. How will E-Verify help? E-Verify is the automated federal program that helps employers assure their prospective hires are in America legally. If Oregon mandates that all the state’s employers use E-Verify, it will help shut off the “jobs magnet” that draws illegal aliens to our state.

This week, please e-mail Bruce Hanna, Republican Co-Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives (rep.brucehanna@state.or.us) and Arnie Roblan, Democratic Co-Speaker of the House (rep.arnieroblan@state.or.us) Urge them to introduce, in the 2012 legislative session, a bill to require that Oregon’s public and private employers use E-Verify. (If the above links are not alive, please retype them on your own word processor and then send them)

Your e-mail need be only three or four sentences. In addition to the points above, you might mention:

– Some 200,000 Oregonians are officially unemployed. Close to an equal number are forced to settle for part-time work because they can’t find full-time work, or have become so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work altogether.

– The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that E-Verify confirms as work-eligible, within five and ten seconds, 97 percent of prospective hires run through the system. Another 1.2 percent are confirmed within 24 hours. Some 2 percent are not confirmed as work-eligible.

– Many companies abide by federal law and refrain from hiring illegal aliens. These companies should not have to compete against companies that cheat by hiring illegal aliens.

– U.S. citizens should not have to compete for jobs with illegal aliens.

– Nationwide, close to 300,000 businesses have registered to use E-Verify. Among them are more than 2,000 in Oregon, including Nike, Costco, Jeld-Wen, and Precision Castparts.

– In 2007, Arizona implemented a law mandating that all public and private employers use E-Verify. Since then, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, that state has seen a 17-percent decline in its illegal-alien population.

Please e-mail Co-Speaker Hanna and Co-Speaker Roblan in support of mandatory E-Verify. Together, we can successfully put mandatory E-Verify on the legislature’s “radar screen” in the upcoming 2012 legislative session.

Thank you for your help.