I asked Alex Nowrasteh for his input on the E-Verify issue that I posted about yesterday.

Here’s what he wrote:

E-Verify won’t work because employers ignore it in states where it is required with virtually zero legal consequences (see blog post). Enforcing E-Verify laws is about as difficult as enforcing current I-9 violations. If Arizona won’t enforce its own E-Verify mandate and the Feds won’t enforce their own I-9 mandate, there is no good reason to expect them to enforce E-Verify.

As Nowrasteh and Harper write in their policy analysis on pages 10-11, E-Verify has barely turned off the wage magnet that attracts illegal immigrants in Arizona (second link). E-Verify is a failed program that will raise hiring costs. What’s worse is that its failure will prompt calls for a national biometric identity system to plug E-Verify’s “loopholes.” That system’s potential will be abused in short order. Best to forestall that.

The policy analysis he refers to is Alex Nowrasteh and Jim Harper, “Checking E-Verify: The Costs and Consequences of a National Worker Screening Mandate,” July 7, 2015.