Bill Would Force Unfunded Mandate on Small Businesses, Lead to 770,000 Job Losses

WASHINGTON, DC — After a chaotic and lengthy markup session, Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) mandatory E-Verify legislation, the Legal Workers Act, passed out of committee Wednesday afternoon. The party-line vote clears the way for the measure to be voted on by the full House of Representatives. Experts and advocates on both sides of the aisle have called Smith’s bill a jobs killer at a time when our economy can least afford it. Below is a statement from Tyler Moran, policy director for the National Immigration Law Center:

“During yesterday’s proceedings, Rep. Lamar Smith and his anti-immigrant colleague Steve King (R-IA) made it clear that mass deportation, and not jobs creation, was on their agenda. Despite reams of evidence that E-Verify would burden small businesses and workers alike and result in job loss for hundreds of thousands of US workers, they ignored the facts and led the way to pass this misguided legislation out of committee.

“Legislators on both sides of the aisle should take note: workers, businesses, and our economy need more than job killer legislation masqueraded as job creation. We will not accept anti-immigrant efforts to impose unfunded mandates on small businesses and force people to wade through miles of bureaucratic red tape at a time of stagnant growth and widespread unemployment. Leaders of the House of Representatives have a choice: they can continue to follow an extremist, anti-immigrant, job killing agenda, or they can focus much-needed efforts on bringing our sputtering economy back to life.”

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