FRANKFORT, Ky. — The last Congress tried and failed to get a comprehensive immigration bill passed, so current lawmakers seem to be taking on the task in smaller chunks.

The House Judiciary Committee is eyeballing several such pieces of legislation, including the Legal Workforce Act (H.R. 1147), which would require employers to use the E-Verify system to check a prospective employee’s employment eligibility. Chair Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said the American people want immigration laws to be enforced and in the past, they were promised tougher enforcement in exchange for the legalization of those unlawfully in the country.

"One way to make sure we discourage illegal immigration in the future is to prevent unlawful immigrants from getting jobs in the U.S," he said. "Requiring the use of E-Verify by all employers across the country will help do just that. The Web-based program is a reliable and fast way for employers to electronically check the work eligibility of newly hired employees."

According to information from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the E-Verify system compares information from an employee’s Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.

While many business owners use the system, it is not a mandate at this time. Ag industry officials, for the most part, are not in favor of the Legal Workforce Act. Kristi Boswell, an American Farm Bureau federation (AFBF) labor specialist, said this piece of legislation would be devastating to agriculture if passed.

"Production would fall $30 (billion) to $60 billion. Food prices could rise 5 to 6 percent with an enforcement-only immigration approach. We ultimately need tandem legislation or an inclusion of an agricultural solution in that legislation for us to support it," she said.

Farm advocates are not necessarily against E-Verify but want a more comprehensive bill supplying a new temporary worker system in place first. Joe Cain, director of the Commodity Division at Kentucky Farm Bureau, said the organization is concerned about attempts by Congress to deal with the immigration problem with enforcement-only solutions.

"H.R. 1147, as reported from the committee, does not address agriculture’s labor crisis. We must provide agricultural employers access to a legal current workforce and a new temporary worker program before mandating use of E-Verify," he said. "Agricultural employers want to play by the rules, but we must have access to a legal workforce, and mandatory E-Verify does not change this, but rather could further adversely affect the labor supply problem.

"We must address the need to provide agricultural employers with a new temporary worker program that gives them access to a legal workforce, before we mandate E-Verify."

Cain said the point is, a program that will supply an adequate workforce should be in place before any legal verification program is enacted. "It’s kind of like putting the verification in front of having a workforce out there to begin with," he said. "The argument is, we need to fix the program we have for employment of workers – a workable farm worker program – before we start getting into any verification-type program.

"It’s not that anybody is totally against an E-Verify program. All we’re doing is asking to address the farm labor situation before you start putting some limitations on the workers we’re able to get here."

House Judiciary Committee members heard arguments both for and against H.R. 1147 earlier this month. The bill ultimately passed out of committee. So far no further action has been taken on the legislation.