On Tuesday, Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) hosted a roundtable entitled, “The Exploitation Crisis: How the U.S. Government is Failing to Protect Migrant Children from Trafficking and Abuse.” The roundtable examined the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)’s Unaccompanied Children (UC) program. NCC provided a statement for the record that can be found by clicking through.
NCC’s statement:
“The U.S. chicken industry is heavily affected by our nation’s immigration policy or, more pointedly, lack thereof. No matter who is in the White House and who is in Congress, and no matter what legislation is considered to address this issue, America’s manufacturers need immigration reform that allows for better screening of candidates and increased access to a secure, abundant labor supply.
“Included in the millions of undocumented individuals residing in the U.S., since 2017, hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children have been placed with non-parent sponsors in the U.S. Most of these children are illegally gaining employment across many sectors of the economy by using fraudulent documentation. To prevent this, employers are left with the challenging task of identifying within our own workforce and within our supply chain increasingly high-quality fraudulent documents, investigating patterns, or seeking other facts to detect a worker’s dishonesty about their age.
“The poultry industry has zero tolerance for the unlawful hiring of minors. Our members have recently come together to form a Task Force to Prevent Child Labor, to treat this issue as non-competitive and to foster collaboration through the sharing of best practices that aid in the prevention of minors from gaining employment.
“NCC members use every tool available to verify the identity, legal immigration status, and age of all prospective employees, no matter how inadequate the tool might be. Unfortunately, the only tools allowed by the government are wholly ineffective.
“Our members screen thousands of potential job applicants every week. The applicants provide documentation, which is confirmed via the government’s primary screening tool, E-Verify. The government then gives the company a green light that this applicant can work in their facility. Any further screening of this applicant is considered inappropriate and is subject to penalties by the Department of Justice for allegedly acting too aggressively in verifying the work authorization status of a new hire.
“However, E-Verify alone does not flag if a Social Security Number (SSN) presented is a duplicate or belongs to a deceased individual. Employers have two internet verification options to confirm that employee names and SSNs match the Social Security Administration’s records. Still, they can only be used for wage-reporting (W-2) purposes—in other words, they can only be used after employees are hired.
“As an employer, the company is now completely liable for hiring an ineligible worker who has provided fraudulent or stolen documentation.
“Other tools are available that employers could use to verify an applicant’s status properly including one known as E-Verify Self-Check.
“E-Verify Self-Check combines E-Verify with an automated “Connect the Dots” program that pulls data from publicly available records and requires employees to take a test on that data. However, employers cannot require the use of Self Check under any circumstances, before or after hiring the individual.
“Employers cannot continue to be caught in the crosshairs of this policy contradiction across the U.S. government. They should be allowed to use robust tools like E-Verify Self-Check to ensure that employees are who they say they are.
“The chicken industry wants a stable, legal, and permanent workforce that can help us continue to produce America’s #1 protein while sustaining the rural communities where we do business. But we need better tools and better access to labor to achieve that. The system is broken, and Washington has done nothing to fix it. It is time to change that.
“Thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement on the record to the Roundtable. We appreciate the Senate’s work in helping to address this problem that not only affects the poultry industry, but the broader U.S. economy.”
