Aug 19, 2011

Mandatory E-Verify raises concerns

U.S. farmers employ about 1.6 million seasonal farm workers a year, but most of them are not authorized to work in the United States. With about 85 percent of farm laborers foreign born, it is estimated that 75 percent are working illegally. Yet agricultural employers have to walk a fine line between compliance and not being discriminatory – doing their due diligence to make sure employees are documented, but bound to take documentation at face value.

That’s where the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ E-verify program comes in. It offers a free, Internet-based verification service to see if employees are authorized to work in the United States. The program currently is voluntary, but two bills have been proposed in Congress – one in the House and one in the Senate – that would make it mandatory. A few states are considering mandating E-verify on their own, or have already passed the legislation.

For growers like Tony DiMare – vice president of The DiMare Co., a fresh grower, packer and shipper of vegetables and citrus with farms in California, Florida and South Carolina – the threat of mandated E-verify comes at an already tenuous time for agriculture.