Why E-Verify? Why e-VeriFILE?

Why should I get a Decal?

• If you use the E-Verify system...

In recent decades, employers who played by the rules and hired legally were at a competitive disadvantage against employers who hired illegally.

The e-VeriFILE program provides law-abiding employers a chance to turn the tables. Many employers are surprised by the level of public support and awareness there is for employers who strengthen the communities in which they do business.

When customers learn that a participating employer helps strengthen the community's wage base by hiring his or her neighbors, rather than driving his or her neighbors' wages down by hiring illegally from out of the country, they often respond in ways that every business owner loves: with more business.

Furthermore, the more a business owner uses the e-VeriFILE program in his or her advertising and promotional campaigns, the more pressure is applied to those of his competitors who aren't being particularly scrupulous in their hiring to begin using E-Verify as well. They may even be brought to virtue. The playing field may once again be level. A race to the top might even ensue.

Public Relations

When an employer participates in the e-VeriFILE program, it establishes good will between it and its community. A participating employer says to its community that it will not enjoy the advantages of doing business in the community while selfishly denying to the community the benefit of hiring locally at fair wages. Polls show this is a winning message in every community in the United States.

Business Relations

An employer who participates in the e-VeriFILE program is advertising its desire to play by the rules. It is providing evidence that its business culture is one that values integrity; it is helping establish a foundation of trust with its business partners, clients, customers, and vendors.

Legal Compliance

When an employer advertises its participation in the E-Verify program, a disincentive is created for those who would attempt to make the employer complicit in illegal activity. In other words, the e-VeriFILE decal displayed at an employer's place of business is a "don't even try" sign.

Legal Liability Protection

As the immigration crisis worsens, immigration enforcement actions will continue to intensify and criminal prosecutions for illegal hiring will continue to climb. If current trends continue, courts will become increasingly friendly to civil actions against employers who gain an unfair economic advantage over competitors and cause economic hardship to American workers through illegal hiring practices. Participation in the E-Verify program, while it doesn't provide a "safe harbor" for an employer, establishes "a rebuttable presumption that it has not knowingly hired an unauthorized alien". [USCIS]

Further, unscrupulous employers who claim to participate in the e-VeriFILE program, but don't, will find it harder to maintain a "knowingly defense" in any legal proceeding against it that is predicated on illegal hiring allegations.