The universal protections of E-Verify are long overdue. They would greatly reduce the pull factors for illegal immigration and would take immediate pressure off of America’s embattled southern border.

—Dan Stein, President of FAIR

(March 2, 2017 - Washington, D.C.) - States that require the use of E-Verify are leading the way in recovery efforts following the worst economic downturn since the great depression, according to a new study released by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). The study can be found here.

“E-Verify ensures that only authorized workers gain employment opportunities in the states where it’s being used,” said FAIR’s President Dan Stein. “As a result, American jobs are going to authorized workers, many of whom had abandoned their job hunt altogether and had given up hope of ever again finding employment,” he said.

E-Verify is a system that allows employers to electronically authenticate the legal work eligibility of prospective applicants. First created by Congress in 1996, the optional program has a 99.7 percent accuracy rate, and has been adopted as mandatory by a number of states.

The study examines 14 states that have created or expanded E-Verify laws since 2009, and found that almost all of the states experienced a drop in unemployment rates as a result, even while the national average increased. Perhaps more impressively, 12 out of the 15 states that passed new E-Verify measures experienced a drop in unemployment greater than the national average. Furthermore, states making E-Verify mandatory experienced the most pronounced decreases in unemployment rates.

“The universal protections of E-Verify are long overdue. They would greatly reduce the pull factors for illegal immigration and would take immediate pressure off of America’s embattled southern border,” said Stein.

The researchers used the U-6 unemployment – which includes job seekers who have stopped searching for employment altogether or have settled on part time work – as the benchmark representation for those who are genuinely unemployed.

“Making E-Verify mandatory across the nation would open the door of opportunity to many of America’s most disadvantaged workers who have been systematically pushed out of the workforce by widespread illegal immigration,” said Stein.