This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
To minimize Utah businesses hiring illegal aliens, mandatory verification, with appropriate penalties, needs to be enacted. Congratulations to The Tribune for "Enforce E-Verify: It's time to provide penalties" (Our View, April 13).
E-Verify works quite effectively to ensure that only legal workers are hired, and in 2010, Utah created a website for businesses that, for a small fee, indicate that they are using E-Verify. But are those businesses really verifying?
A recently completed study by UFIRE (Utahns for Immigration Reform and Enforcement) indicates that more than half of the nearly 1,000 companies signed up as users of E-Verify on Utah's website do not appear as registered users on the Department of Homeland Security's list.
There may be reasons for this discrepancy. The businesses may be using a different status verification system. They could be accessing E-Verify under a different business name or they haven't registered to use E-Verify.
Unauthorized aliens in the workforce are decreasing. Enforcement will continue that trend.
Robert Wren
Heber City