Democrats, Republicans and independents seeking a unifying issue across America’s fractured electoral landscape need look no further than E-Verify.
The federal government’s online system that screens job applicants’ eligibility to legally work in this country enjoys overwhelming support with voters.
Respondents to a post-election poll showed 73.6 percent favor mandatory use of E-Verify. Just 8.6 percent oppose it.
Support for E-Verify cuts across all party and ethnic/racial lines. It is backed by 54.6 backed of Democrats, 90.5 percent of Republicans and 78.4 percent of independents. It is supported by 80.2 percent of white voters, 58.4 percent of Hispanic voters, 52.7 percent of black voters and 73.8 percent of Asian voters.
That level of consensus is hard to find anywhere, on anything. Heck, there’s more division on whether professional athletes should stand for the National Anthem.
The national exit poll, conducted by Zogby Analytics on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, exposes the dysfunctional disconnect between the public’s commonsense wishes and the (in)action of their elected representatives in Washington.
Twenty states require all or nearly all private-sector employers to use E-Verify. As of Dec. 31, 2017, 2.4 million hiring sites were enrolled in the program. Deep blue California had the most sites: 216,850.
Yet Congress — beholden to special interests that prey on cheap, illegal labor — remains gridlocked.
FAIR President Dan Stein calls mandatory E-Verify “low-hanging fruit” for President Donald Trump in the coming two years.
“The 2018 elections were clearly not a repudiation of the president’s stances on immigration policy and enforcement. To the contrary, these policies enjoy broad support and likely helped minimize his party’s losses in the midterms,” Stein said.
Indeed, the Zogby survey found 88.3 percent of voters — including 82.8 percent of Democrats and 85.7 percent of independents — believe illegal immigration is “a problem” or a “serious problem.”
E-Verify goes to the root of the problem in the workplace. As long as U.S. employers are free to hire illegal aliens, the job magnet will keep attracting border-busting migrants, and Americans’ paychecks will continue to be undercut.
For wages to go up, illegal immigration must go down. Americans know that; it’s high time politicians in Washington started working for their constituents and the national interest by making E-Verify the law of the land.