(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Sen. Eric Wimberger, R-Oconto, sees an E-Verify bill that he has co-authored as a step toward requiring E-Verify for all employers in the state, like 10 other states require.
For now, however, Assembly Bill 281 would require state government employees and state contractors with contracts more than $50,000 to use E-Verify for employees.
“This is a commonsense measure that promotes transparency and accountability in public contracting and state employment,” said Rep. Jim Piwowarczyk, R-Hubertus.
Hubertus told the Assembly Committee on Commerce that, had Iowa used this requirement, it would have avoided the situation where Des Moines Public School Superintendent Ian Andre Roberts was arrested after it was found that he had weapons charges and was in the country illegally.
“This bill would make sure this does not happen here in Wisconsin,” Piwowarczyk said.
Wimberger said that he knows and has experienced how difficult it can be to find employees.
“The fact that we struggle to find labor does not justify doing something that is destructive to our society,” Wimberger said.
He compared it to before the Civil War when cotton farmers said that they wouldn’t have anyone to pick cotton if they could not have slaves.
“The answer is that we’re going to figure it out,” Wimberger said. “… Advance as a society and not be luddites.”
Christine Neumann-Ortiz of Voces de la Frontera registered against the bill, saying it would make some undocumented workers go the extra steps of buying a Social Security number from someone else in order to work and then it would raise the charges that could be brought against the worker if they are found to have used false information.
“We need to make sure that, here in Wisconsin, people are made to feel welcome and their contributions are welcomed,” Neumann-Ortiz said.”… In the absence of immigration reform, it is what people are coerced to do.”
David Ortiz Whittingham, of Worker Justice Wisconsin, said that the requirement will lead more contractors to heavily use subcontractors who do not have the E-Verify requirement to do the actual contracted work and shield “brazenly illegal practices.”
“The prime contractor on the project will only employ a small fraction of the workers on the project,” he explained.
Wimberger said that the use of illegal immigrant labor undercuts the value of an hour of labor for those in the country illegally, citing Cesar Chavez.
He called the employment of workers in the country illegally “corrosive.”
