House approves $42.7 billion for Homeland Security, including provisions inserted by Giffords
WASHINGTON-Oct. 15, 2009 - A provision by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords to improve and extend operation of an employee verification system was part of a $42.7 billion national security appropriation bill approved today by the House of Representatives.
"Employers must be held responsible if they knowingly hire illegal immigrants," Giffords said. "But employers must also be able to rely on the federal government to provide a reliable system for determining a potential employee's legal status."
The legislation also includes provisions by Giffords to extend visa programs for religious workers, doctors serving rural areas and for foreign nationals who invest money in the United States.
The House approved the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act this afternoon in a 307-to-114 vote. The Senate will now consider the measure.
Giffords, whose 8th Congressional District includes 114 miles of international border, inserted language in the bill to appropriate $137 million to operate the E-Verify program for an additional three years and to improve its accuracy.
E-Verify is an Internet-based system operated by Homeland Security in partnership with the Social Security Administration. E-Verify allows employers to electronically verify that newly hired employees are legally entitled to work in the United States.
Although Giffords supports E-Verify, she believes there is a more effective way for employers to check the status of employees. In 2008 and again this year, Giffords and U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican, introduced the New Employee Verification Act, legislation intended to replace and improve on E-Verify.
Known as NEVA, the Giffords-Johnson bill would transition verifications from the voluntary E-Verify process, in which 2 percent of employers participate, to a mandatory process for all new hires.
NEVA would increase the civil and criminal penalties for hiring illegal workers. In some cases, the penalties under NEVA would be more than 10 times greater than the current penalty. If an employer engages in a pattern of knowingly hiring illegal workers, NEVA would elevate the crime to the felony level and increase the maximum fine from $3,000 to $50,000, with a minimum year of imprisonment.
The system would include a standard background check and the collection of a "biometric" characteristic - such as a thumbprint - to secure an employee's identity and prevent the illegal use of a Social Security number, stolen or fraudulently-obtained drivers' license or altered identification documents.
"NEVA is the best way to ensure that employees are legally entitled to work in the United States," Giffords said. "But until it is improved and in place, E-Verify must be strengthened."
Giffords also included language in the Homeland Security funding bill to extend, for three years, issuance of three specific types of visas:
- R visas, issued to religious workers;
- Conrad 30-J visas, which allow state health agencies to annually hire up to 30 foreign physicians to practice in rural and inner-city communities that have difficulty recruiting physicians; and
- EB-5 visas, issued to foreign nationals who invest at least $1 million and create at least 10 jobs in the United States.
The provisions are part of a bill focused on securing the nation's borders and preparing for any potential disaster. It funds the full costs of 20,163 Border Patrol agents - an increase of 7,814 agents, or 63 percent, since 2006. More than 17,000 of these agents will be based on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Giffords noted that a particular focus of the bill is increasing security and reducing violence along the Southwest Border, where increased activity by Mexican drug cartels has led to a significant rise in violence, drug smuggling and weapons smuggling.
The bill prohibits Guantanamo detainees from being released into the United States and its territories. It also prohibits Guantanamo detainees from being transferred to the United States and its territories - with only one narrow exception: for the purposes of prosecution.
A detainee can only be transferred to the U.S. for prosecution after Congress receives a plan detailing the risks involved and a plan for mitigating such risk, and the state's governor receives a certification from the U.S. attorney general that the individual poses little or no security risk.