Watered down E-verify bill gets local legislators' support

A watered down E-verify bill has passed the House and is pending in the Senate.

A bill that would have required all employers in the state to use the federal E-verify computer system to check the legal status of new hires was considered in the Legislature two years ago. It passed the House but was killed in the Senate after local cherry growers complained, state Rep. Scott Reichner, R-Bigfork, said.

Reichner said that after the House passed the mandatory E-verify bill, he got a lot of calls from cherry growers.

The new bill states that all employers in the state can use the federal E-verify computer system to confirm the legal status of new employees or they can use the I-9 paper form currently in use. The bill has received support from local legislators.

House Bill 297, sponsored by Rep. David Howard, R–Park City, calls for the suspension of an employer’s business license for failure to use E-verify or properly fill out employee I-9 verification forms.

The bill passed the state House of Representatives 56-41 on Feb. 28 and was scheduled to be heard by the Senate Business Committee on Friday. Reichner and Mark Blasdel, R-Somers, voted in favor of the bill.

Cody Herring, who co-owns a 55-acre cherry farm on Flathead Lake, has mixed feelings about E-verify. He currently is required to use E-verify for all of Glacier Fresh’s new hires because the business improperly filled out I-9 forms in the past.

Herring has been co-owner of Glacier Fresh with his mother Marcia Zimmerman since 2001.

“It’s made for employees who work longer than a month,” he said. “We have to use it because we were audited before by Homeland Security.” As a result, the business was placed on one year of probation and required to use E-verify. “Once you use it for a new hire, you have to use it forever,” he said.

This requirement came about because the federal government doesn’t want businesses to discriminate against potential employees, Herring said. In other words, he explained that a business can’t just use E-verify when it suspects someone is illegal.

Herring doesn’t believe there are very many illegal immigrants in Montana. Most of the migrant workers his business employs are from Washington state, he said. “I don’t think it’s a problem. The vast, vast majority are legal. They might have a family member who’s not,” like a grandmother who watches the kids, he said.

Ken Edgington, a Yellow Bay cherry grower who sits on the Flathead Cherry Growers Board of Directors, wasn’t familiar with the current bill. However, he said the Flathead Cherry Growers opposed the E-verify bill two years ago.

If a business uses E-verify and finds out that someone doesn’t have authorization to work in the U.S., the business still has to hire them, Edgington said. That’s because there’s a two-week waiting period in which the employee has to furnish new documentation. “They would be long gone” by the time the three-week cherry picking season is complete, he said.

Herring said he knows some illegal immigrants from Mexico who are currently living in the United States. “It’s OK for them to go to school. It’s OK for them to get medical care. Then they should be allowed to get a job,” he reasoned. “These are hard-working people.”

In November, Montana voters approved a ballot measure requiring proof of legal U.S. residency in order to receive public services. The Montana Immigrant Justice Alliance and the state teachers union are challenging the law in court.

Herring also owns a construction company, but it only employs two other people. As far as his construction business goes, “I don’t see any issues,” he said. Herring doesn’t normally have to hire new employees for the business, especially since 2008 when the Great Recession started.

Howard has also introduced a bill (HB 50) that would require cities to honor the rule of law and coordinate their law enforcement activities with federal immigration officials. It passed the House 61-37 and the Senate 28-21. Reichner, Blasdel and state Sen. Verdell Jackson, R-Kalispell, all voted in favor of the bill, which was amended in the Senate and sent back to the House on March 13.

A measure similar to HB 50 cleared the state Legislature two years ago, but was vetoed by former Gov. Brian Schweitzer.