Worker Verification Program Passes Senate Committee

The Virginia Senate Committee on Courts of Justice on Monday unanimously passed Sen. George Barker’s legislation requiring all public contractors and their subcontractors to register and participate in a federal Electronic Work Verification Program to weed out illegal immigrants.

Barker, D-Alexandria, said he is pleased the bill passed through the committee, but there's more paths the bill must cross before it is law. There is a similar bill filed in the House of Delegates that would prohibit the state from contracting with any company for a year if that company fails to register and use the free E-Verify program, a database of  personal information that is checked with federal databases to establish a worker's residency status, among other details. The federal government and 10 other states have similar requirements for contractors.

The legislation will go before the full Senate today before heading to the House of Delegates for action. 

Senators Barker and Jeff McWaters, R-Virginia Beach, worked on the legislation.

“My four-year effort to get this legislation passed was worth the time and energy it took,” Barker said. “I am pleased that your state tax dollars will be used by companies that make sure their employees are legal when they are working on highway construction and other important projects for Virginia.”

Similar bills have not passed through both the Senate and the House in the past. 

Prince William County has been the focus of the illegal immigration debate in Virginia when it passed a series of laws in July 2008 that allowed police to check the residency status of any person stopped for questioning and act as federal immigration agents if they discover a violation. Other localities passed similar policies, including some in Maryland.

Prince William is very diverse, and for the first time minorities—blacks, Asians, Hispanics and others— make up the majority of residents, according to the 2010 Census. Virginia's Hispanic population almost doubled with a 91.7-percent increase since 2000.

Prince William County has a population estimated to be 379,166. The Census shows that the Hispanic community grew from 27,338 in 2000 to  about 66,648 today.

A study by the Migration Policy Institute that looked at the application of these new enforcement policies found that localities that adopted them saw a decrease in the number of Hispanic immigrants. According to the , Prince William County lost 21 percent of its Hispanic noncitizens from 2007 to 2009, dropping from 32,100 to 25,500, the report said.