Oregon House Bill 2708,  E-Verify Bill

Please call your State Representative and Senator in support of HB 2708.    Click here to identify your representatives.

HB 2708 would Oregon employers to use the federal E-Verify program to verify the work authorization of all new employees.   Any employer who does not verify the work authorization of all new hires cannot claim as a business expense any wages paid to the unverified workers,

Oregonians for Immigration urge passage of House Bill 2708.    With Oregon’s unemployment rate at 10 percent and growing, HB 2708 would go a long way towards insuring that jobs created would go to American citizens and legal residents.

The E-Verify program is a free, easy to use online system that equips participating employers with the tools to quickly and effectively verify the employment eligibility of newly-hired employees.  E-Verify is a product of partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.  It draws upon information stored in various DHS and SSA databases to determine an individual’s employment eligibility status.

Currently DHS says that over 100,000 companies nation wide have voluntarily signed up for the E-Verify program.  The system is 99.6 percent accurate.   More than 93 percent of requests are verified within five seconds: another 1.2 percent within 24 hours.     About 5 percent of new employees are not confirmed as work authorized, mirroring the same percentage of illegal aliens estimated to be in the work force.

Over 500 companies in Oregon have voluntarily signed up for E-Verify.    The program is available to all U.S. companies at no cost. 

Currently 11 states require use of E-Verify in certain circumstances:  Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Utah.

Please call your State Representative and Senator in support of HB 2708.