COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Ohio lawmakers are moving ahead with a bill that is meant for employee eligibility verification but could also help identify workers who entered the United States without legal permission.
“In part, this is because we look at our southern border and see that as a real problem,” Rep. D.J. Swearingen (R-Huron) said.
House Bill 327 is sponsored by Swearingen and Rep. Scott Wiggam (R-Wayne County). The bill was reported out of committee 10-2 with one Republican and one Democrat voting against moving it to the House floor.
The legislation would require employers that have 75 or more employees and non-residential construction contractors to use E-Verify to confirm employment eligibility.
“It’s a fairness issue,” Swearingen said. “Those employers who are doing it the right way should be rewarded for hiring a legal workforce and those workers who are doing it the right way by being here legally to work should also be rewarded.”
E-Verify is an online federal system that confirms whether someone is eligible to be working in their state. The system flags people like minors or non-American workers and Swearingen said it shouldn’t create an additional burden to employers.
“All the information you need to plug into the E-Verify system, employers already have on the i-9 form that they have for most employees,” he said.
More than 18,000 employers in Ohio are already enrolled to use E-Verify and in one year, there were nearly 6,000 uses of the system. But Democratic leadership said there are still some things to work out in the bill.
“I think there’s concerns, specifically about can that be operationalized, especially by some of the smaller contractors,” Ohio House Minority Leader Rep. Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) said.
The Ohio Contractors Association is against the bill. The association declined to do an interview at this time because it said there are still too many moving pieces to the legislation.
But in written committee testimony, the association said while it does not condone the hiring of undocumented workers, the legislation is inconsistent, pointing out, for example, that the residential construction industry is exempt from this bill.
“There could always be more changes in the process as we go through,” Swearingen said. “But I think [the criticism] is a little unfair because this is really a broad group of construction workers that are going to be subject to the bill.”
There are penalties in the bill for non-compliance, including fines up to $10,000 and a year of disqualification from state contracts.
The bill now awaits a House floor vote; there are two House sessions left before lawmakers break for the summer.