Trump seeks cuts to E-Verify

With help from Ted Hesson and Tim Noah

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— President Donald Trump's proposed budget would cut funding for one of his favorite programs, E-Verify.

— Employers, at least for now, don't have to give the EEOC pay data broken down by gender and race.

— DHS is on track to handle 100,000 migrants at the southern border in March.

GOOD MORNING! It’s Tuesday, March 19 and this is Morning Shift, your daily tipsheet on labor and immigration news. Send tips, exclusives and suggestions to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected]. Follow us on Twitter at @RebeccaARainey, @tedhesson, @IanKullgren, and @TimothyNoah1.

TRUMP WANTS TO CUT E-VERIFY: President Trump’s budget proposes an 8 percent funding cut to the E-Verify program — even though the administration is usually bent on boosting spending on anything to curb illegal immigration.

The White House requested roughly $122 million in discretionary funds for the electronic program in fiscal year 2020, down from the $133 million that Congress spent in the spending package approved in February, H.J. Res. 31 (116). ($133 million was what the Trump administration requested for fiscal year 2019, and also for fiscal year 2018.) Here at Morning Shift, we wondered briefly whether we were seeing things. But a USCIS spokesman assured us that the 8 percent cut was real: A higher funding level is no longer needed thanks to technological modernization. A senior administration official added that the White House still favors legislation to make E-Verify mandatory nationwide.

EEOC PAY BREAKDOWN SUSPENDED: The EEOC won't collect 2018 pay data from businesses broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender for the filing period that started Monday, according to an announcement on the agency's website. Trump's Office of Management and Budget stayed the Obama-era changes to the so-called EEO-1 form that required such information in 2017. But earlier this month, a federal district court reinstated those requirements finding that OMB's move “lacked reasoned explanation.”

“The EEOC is working diligently on next steps” in response to the court order, according to its website, and “will provide further information as soon as possible.” Advocacy groups Democracy Forward and the National Women's Law Center filed for a status conference Monday in D.C. seeking more information. That conference will be held today at 11:30 a.m. Read the Monday notice here.

DHS ON TRACK TO HANDLE 100K MIGRANTS: Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday that DHS expects in March to arrest or turn away 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, POLITICO’s Ted Hesson reports. “The situation at our southern border has gone from a crisis, to a national emergency, to a near-system-wide meltdown,” Nielsen said in remarks prepared for delivery. DHS arrested more than 66,000 people crossing the border illegally in February, the highest single-month total since March 2009, and logged 9,653 “inadmissibles.” Nielsen’s March estimate represents roughly a one-third increase over that. But border arrest numbers remain far below their levels in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. More from Hesson here.

THANKS FOR THE RAZOR WIRE!: Concertina wire, also known as razor wire, is hard to find in Tijuana, so thieves are deeply grateful that the Trump administration strung "huge 18-foot thickets" of the stuff atop border fencing in November, reports Wendy Fry in the San Diego Union Tribune. The thieves have been stealing it and selling it to homeowners, who use it to secure their property in "the most violent city in the world in 2018, according a new report by the Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice." Reynaldo González Mora, chief of Tijuana’s border liaison unit, told Fry that police have arrested "about 15 to 20 people in the last week for allegedly stealing the material." More here.





GENDER PAY GAP: House Democratic leaders will next week take up and likely pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would require employers to demonstrate that any gender pay disparities are attributable to job performance. More from POLITICO's Sarah Ferris here.

DAIRY FARMERS HIT BY DEPORTATIONS: Smaller dairy farms in upstate New York “have been some of the hardest hit” by the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies because their proximity to the northern border places them within Border Patrol's jurisdiction, Christina Goldbaum reports for The New York Times. “We are seeing that the immigration enforcement is having a tremendous enforcement impact on farm workers, on farms,” Mary Jo Dudley, director of the Cornell Farmworker Program told the Times. “For many farmers, there’s no alternative labor force.”

Worksite enforcement investigations “surged” in fiscal year 2018, according to ICE, after agency officials called for a 400 percent increase in worksite operations. “There are people out there who just say, ‘Send them all back and build a wall,’” Mike McMahon, a New York dairy farmer told the Times. “But they would be facing empty shelves in the grocery store if that were to happen.” More here.

MANCHIN WON’T SUPPORT LGBTQ PROTECTIONS: Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) is the only Democratic senator who won't support a bill that would bar employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, POLITICO’s Burgess Everett reports."No one should be afraid of losing their job or losing their housing because of their sexual orientation," Manchin said Monday. "I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools."

The Equality Act, reintroduced by Democrats earlier this month, would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to clarify that the law's prohibition against discrimination based on sex extends to sexual orientation and gender identity. Manchin said he'll continue working with the bill's authors to see if they can reach a compromise, Everett reports. More here.

GM TWITTER WARS: The United Automobile Workers had some words Monday morning about President Donald Trump's weekend tweets blaming the union for General Motors’ recent shuttering of a Lordstown, Ohio plant. “Corporations close plants, workers don’t," the UAW tweeted. "Don’t let GM off the hook.” Trump tweeted over the weekend that CEO Mary Barra, in a telephone conversation, blamed the UAW for Lordstown being shuttered. The plant closed March 6, and the UAW sued GM last month for idling three U.S. plants, including Lordstown, that had collective bargaining agreements. U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Monday in a written statement: “The President has made lots of big promises and failed to stand up for workers at every turn.”

A new report out Monday from The American Federation of Teachers and the anti-hedge fund organization Hedge Clippers argued that Lordstown's closing resulted from “a four-year campaign by hedge fund managers to squeeze GM for every available dollar.” Read the report here.

EMPLOYERS RESIST IMMIGRATION CRACKDOWN: Some 80 percent of U.S. HR professionals and hiring managers said they planned to maintain or increase the number of foreign workers they employ despite the Trump administration’s efforts to make legal immigration more difficult, according to a new report out today from the immigration management company Envoy Global. Only 12 percent said the current immigration system had no impact on their hiring strategies. Richard Burke, CEO of Envoy Global, told Morning Shift that survey respondents found it ironic that the Trump administration was moving to tighten immigration laws “exactly at a time when the regulatory regime in many other contexts is being loosened to help employers and . . . in the face of chronic talent shortages.” Find the study at 10 a.m. here.

WARNER BROS CHAIRMAN TO STEP DOWN: WarnerMedia announced Monday that Kevin Tsujihara will leave his position leading Warner Brothers studio after a recent Hollywood Reporter article unearthed details of his affair with a younger actress who he promised to get acting roles. AT&T, which owns WarnerMedia, is investigating the matter. More from the Wall Street Journal here.

— "Beto O’Rourke’s border cred is genuine. It’s not the same as an immigration platform." from Vox

— “Poll: Losing Amazon second HQ deal was bad for New York,” from The Associated Press

— “‘Middle-Class Joe’ rakes in millions” from POLITICO

— “Alan Krueger, Democratic labor economist, dies at 58," from POLITICO

— “Women in Economics Report Rampant Sexual Assault and Bias," from The New York Times

THAT’S ALL FOR MORNING SHIFT!

CORRECTION: The March 18 edition of Morning Shift incorrectly stated the date the GM Lordstown, Ohio, plant closed. It was idled March 6.

Follow us on Twitter Rebecca Rainey @rebeccaarainey