Undocumented Farm Workers Put Wedge Between Republicans

A proposal to mandate an electronic employee verification program contained in a looming Republican-led immigration reform bill has opened a rift within the Republican conference over concerns it could have a detrimental impact on the U.S. agriculture industry.

The proposal, dubbed the Secure the Border Act of 2023, is a sweeping Republican-led proposal backed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to revive numerous facets of former President Donald Trump's immigration policies. But it also includes a number of new, hardline reforms to stem the tide of undocumented migrants entering the country ahead of the looming expiration of Title 42, a policy that allowed the U.S. to reject asylum seekers under the COVID-19 public health emergency.

In addition to resuming construction of Trump's border wall, the proposal outlines hundreds of millions of dollars in myriad security upgrades within the Department of Homeland Security's border patrol unit along with mandatory background checks for those apprehended crossing the border without documentation, among numerous other provisions.

However, the proposal also includes language requiring all employers in the U.S. to vet all those hoping to work for them using E-Verify, a web-based system created in the 1990s that allows enrolled employers to confirm the eligibility of their employees to work in the United States.

While an E-Verify mandate is by no means unusual on Capitol Hill—Colorado Democratic Senator Michael Bennet introduced a similar requirement in his failed Affordable and Secure Food Act last year—the GOP's Secure the Border Act lacks language contained in Bennet's bill creating a path to citizenship for farm workers.

The GOP plan also lacks language proposing the creation of an improved H-2A visa that would allow migrant workers to work in the United States year-round when applying for farm jobs where nobody else was available, rather than the eight months allowed under current law.

Taken together, critics believe both facets of the GOP legislation could prove detrimental to the American agricultural industry if adopted. According to federal data compiled in 2022, some 86 percent of agricultural workers in the United States are foreign-born, while just under half of all U.S. agricultural workers are undocumented.

And generally, those undocumented migrants are living in red states. According to a 2019 survey from the Pew Research Center, one-third or more of the migrant population in 19 agriculture-dominant states like South Carolina, Idaho, Arkansas and Nebraska were undocumented, helping underpin lawmakers' relatively moderate positions on immigration there.

A 2011 GOP-led immigration reform bill containing an E-Verify mandate failed after objections were raised by the agriculture lobby, who warned of detrimental impacts to U.S. agriculture, according to The New York Times. Several years later in 2018, another immigration reform bill championed by the GOP House majority was notably tanked over Republican infighting over the bill, with some GOP lawmakers in agriculturally friendly districts ultimately rejecting language that could have impacted Hispanic farm workers in their district.

"Congress has kicked the can for too long on fixing our broken immigration system, including for our agriculture workers," New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik—now the third-leading Republican in the House and a supporter of the Secure the Border Act—said in a news release announcing her decision to cross party lines to force a vote on the 2018 legislation.

While the new proposal has the backing of leadership, others, including Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, have expressed concern over the E-Verify provisions, telling Roll Call earlier this week, "I have concerns with it coming at the expense of American agriculture."

However, it's still unclear whether he'd ultimately support the measure.

"Congressman Simpson supports border security and leadership's efforts on this legislation," a spokesperson in Simpson's office told Newsweek. "He has long advocated for reforms to our nation's immigration system recognizing the importance of creating a legal workforce for our agriculture communities and wants to ensure that any legislation both secures the border and ensures that American agriculture producers have access to a stable workforce now and in the future."

Others, like Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, have opposed E-Verify on civil liberties grounds, saying it was an undue intervention into people's right to work.

"I will NOT vote to require EVERY American to get Biden's permission if they want to work," he wrote in a tweet opposing the bill. "Specifically, I'm opposed to E-verify. Giving the federal government more power over YOU is a mistake in my opinion. I support border security, but not E-verify."

However, the proposal to implement E-Verify as an immigration control mechanism has begun to gain momentum in the GOP. Recent polling in the state of Texas by conservative pollster Rasmussen suggested nearly three-quarters of the state—including 56 percent of Democrats—supported an E-Verify mandate for the state's employers, while presidential candidates like Nikki Haley have embraced an E-Verify mandate as part of their platform on immigration.

"I told South Carolina businesses you can not hire anyone who's been in this country illegally," she said in a video she posted Tuesday of a previous interview she'd done with The Blaze's Glenn Beck. "So they all left, because they couldn't get jobs. We need to do that all over the country." (As of 2016, the state still had 85,000 undocumented migrants, according to Pew data. Haley left office in 2017.)

Other states have already begun to look into strengthening their own regulations. While 27 U.S. states require at least some employers to use E-Verify, the Florida State Legislature recently passed legislation mandating all employers with 25 or more employees to use the service to verify their employees' legal status. Others, like California, have banned its use entirely, bucking states like Missouri, Wyoming and Pennsylvania which only require employee verification for companies under public contracts.

While not yet signed into law, the Florida proposal is already expected to have widespread impacts on the state's agricultural and construction industries. According to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute, approximately 772,000 undocumented immigrants are currently living in Florida.

Conservative groups like The Federation for American Immigration Reform, however, have supported the legislation, highlighting comments by members of Congress like Arizona Republican and Freedom Caucus member Andy Biggs claiming the lack of any detrimental impact on the state's industries since an E-Verify mandate was first implemented in the state 16 years ago.

"E-Verify works," he said. "Our economy has not folded."

Newsweek has reached out to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's office as well as that of the bill's primary sponsor, Represetnative Mario Diaz-Balart, via email for comment.