BOISE, ID – Elected Idaho officials have introduced multiple bills pushing to regulate immigration in Idaho, making it clear that addressing unauthorized immigration is a priority. At least one legislator is pushing to require all employers use E-Verify, a program meant to check an individual’s work authorization status.
In 2021, there were about 35,000 unauthorized immigrants living in Idaho, according to a report from the University of Idaho’s McClure Center for Public Policy, and Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he introduced House Bill 252 with the goal to give people who are in the country with proper work status more opportunities.
However, his bill could significantly impact the labor supply in some of the state’s most critical industries — including the construction workers his region relies on and the dairy workers that supply Idaho’s top agricultural export.
Redman represents one of Idaho’s fastest growing counties, which has seen the third-highest percentage increase in housing units over the last decade — or nearly 12,000 homes built between 2010 and 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Many of the homes built in his region were likely built by unauthorized workers.
Unauthorized immigrants make up a disproportionate share of the U.S. construction workforce. One in five unauthorized workers in the U.S. is employed in construction, primarily working a job to install drywall, roofs or painting buildings, according to the Center for American Progress.
Idaho Gov. Brad Little has repeatedly shared his strong support for President Donald Trump’s immigration policies; however, he said an E-Verify requirement would be a burden for Idaho employers.
“It’s not black and white,” Little told legislative reporters in a meeting on Feb. 25. “If we could give people certainty that their workforce is not going to be disrupted, that burden — the paperwork burden on one side — would be outweighed by the risk on the other side.”
House Bill 252 has not yet received a committee hearing. A hearing could take place in the coming days or weeks, or it could have the same fate as a similar bill Redman introduced last year that died as the legislative session ended. Legislative leadership is aiming to adjourn the session by March 21, but the end date could be extended.
If it were to pass both chambers of the Legislature and receive approval from the governor, House Bill 252 would take effect on July 1.
Most states in the West do not have state mandated E-Verify requirements
The E-Verify program was established in 1996 to reduce employment of unauthorized workers. The service is managed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and it works by comparing new hires’ information in a Form I-9 against Social Security Administration and DHS records. As of 2024, more than 1.3 million U.S. employers were enrolled in the program.
Many states have no state-mandated requirement to use the program. States in the southeast have the most concentration of laws that require all or most employers to use E-Verify, while two states, California and Illinois, have restrictions against the use of E-Verify, according to Equifax.
Idaho’s only E-Verify requirement mandates that state agencies use the system — a policy established in 2009 by an executive order from former Gov. Butch Otter. Most states in the West — aside from Idaho, Utah and Arizona — do not have E-Verify requirements.
In Utah, employers with 150 or more employees are required to use the program. In Arizona, the law is stricter, and it requires all employers to use it.
What does E-Verify cost?
E-Verify is technically free for anyone to use. However, attorney Chris Thomas, a partner at Holland & Hart, told the Sun there are costs associated with having to use the program.
Using E-Verify is expensive for companies that use a third party software to manage E-Verify compliance — such as Equifax, Workday or ADP — and reduce their administrative burden, Thomas said.
Additionally, employers could face costs if they lose workers who do not pass the E-Verify process.
Thomas represents companies all over the U.S. who are concerned about federal investigations into unauthorized immigrants in their workplace. E-Verify is not always accurate, he said, with the most common loophole being identity theft — where individuals assume a real person’s identity and obtain fake documents with their name, date of birth, and Social Security number. This allows them to pass the E-Verify process undetected.
“Compounding the issue is the fact that individuals can use E-Verify personally to check to see whether their information passes,” Thomas said. “So you can come up with a high degree of confidence on your first day of employment knowing that you’ll pass E-Verify.”
When advising companies during DHS investigations, he said that employers often complied with the law by enrolling in E-Verify. However, over the course of the investigation, they would discover that many employees had submitted fraudulent documents, ultimately resulting in the loss of a significant portion of their workforce.
Does a universal employer E-Verify mandate work? Let’s look at Arizona.
Arizona’s law to require all employers to use E-Verify went into effect in January 2008, and it was meant to prevent identity theft and employers from hiring unauthorized immigrants.
A migration studies publication found that Arizona’s population of non-naturalized citizens dropped after the state’s E-Verify mandate took effect. However, the early days of the law coincided with the start of the Great Recession, which was likely the main cause of the decline in the unauthorized immigrant population, the report found.
Since it was implemented, at least three companies have faced punishment for hiring unauthorized immigrants. That’s not because Arizonan employers are complying with the E-Verify law, but it’s because no state law enforcement agency is routinely looking for violations, the Arizona Republic reported.
Today, there is limited government enforcement of E-Verify requirements in Arizona, Thomas said.
“It feels like window dressing,” Thomas said about E-Verify, noting that even in states with stricter enforcement, the focus is only on whether employers are enrolled in E-Verify rather than ensuring that unauthorized workers are actually being prevented from employment.
In Idaho’s case, Redman said the Idaho Department of Labor and the Office of the Attorney General would be in charge of enforcing the E-Verify statute if it were implemented.
There are also other ways to get around E-Verify, according to José Patiño — the vice president of education and external affairs at Aliento, an Arizona nonprofit dedicated to supporting unauthorized, DACA, and mixed-immigration status families.
Between 2004 to 2013, Patiño worked in the construction sector in Arizona. He was unauthorized to work in the country at the time.
In his experience, Patiño said if one person in the crew had legal permission to work, then that individual would disperse the funds as they were paid by project, rather than given an hourly wage.
“During the 2020-2021 housing boom here, the employers just looked the other way, and there was nobody who was going to go after them because they needed the labor,” he told the Sun. “These were the only people who were willing to go out of work in those conditions for that.”
Construction jobs in Arizona’s desert landscape are not highly desirable by U.S. citizens, Patiño said.
“It’s really difficult to recruit an 18-year-old and say, ‘Hey, do you want to wake up at 4 a.m. to drive to a construction site until 5 a.m. in the summer when it’s over 100 degrees until 2 or 3 p.m., and basically be exhausted,” he said.
And like Idaho, the agricultural industry in Arizona relies on unauthorized workers to pick the state’s top agricultural commodities, Patiño said.
“Many U.S.-born don’t want to put their bodies through the difficulty of picking lettuce or cotton, or working in a construction job where you’re carrying 200 to 300 pounds for a set amount of time for limited pay,” Patiño said.
Every time Patiño talks to employers in those sectors, he’s told they need more labor
“For me, how do we have an actual conversation on solutions that are going to actually work, not necessarily thinking, ‘If we deport all the undocumented folks, then we’ll attract U.S. citizens,’” Patiño said. “A lot of them will not be attracted. Even if the pay increases, it’s the quality of life that has really risen in workers’ mindsets post pandemic.”
At least two Idaho industry leaders oppose E-Verify mandate
Unauthorized immigrants living in Idaho largely work in the state’s agriculture, construction and hospitality industries, according to the McClure Center’s report. Redman told the Idaho Capital Sun he understands that his bill would impact those industries in Idaho, but his bill fits in with a national movement aimed at curbing unauthorized immigration.
“I think there definitely would be an impact there,” Redman told the Sun. “But again, we’re here down at the Legislature to enforce laws and create laws for residents of the country and the state, and so that’s kind of the point behind it.”
Redman said he believes it is the federal government’s responsibility to create visa programs as a solution to supplement for a lost workforce.
The U.S. only offers two kinds of seasonal visas, one is known as the H-2A visa, which allows employers to hire foreign farmworkers but they must provide transportation and housing. The second is the H-2B visa, which allows employers to bring workers to fill nonagricultural jobs such as landscaping, meatpacking, poultry, construction, among others.
At least two industries oppose Idaho’s House Bill 252.
Idaho Home Builders Association state President Todd Webb told the Idaho Capital Sun the association opposes the bill as it is written.
Similarly, Rick Naerebout, the CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said the E-Verify bill would put significant sector’s of Idaho’s economy that do not have access to visa programs in “very precarious positions.”
About 90% of the Idaho dairy jobs are filled by foreign-born individuals who are Spanish-speaking. Dairy work is year round, and workers do not have access to a visa program, so the Idaho Dairymen’s Association relies on the unauthorized workforce, Naerebout said.
Naerebout said the association is willing to work with legislators to find a way he could support the bill, but there would have to be changes so it would not impact his industry’s workforce.
“We would have to see some sort of trigger language where the bill would only apply to that industry sector after they got access to a visa program,” he said.
Like Naerebout, legal experts have said the country’s current visa system is not sufficient enough for the country’s labor demand. Alycia Moss, an immigration attorney and partner at Hawley Troxell law firm, said at a Boise City Club panel on Feb. 25 that the country needs a middle ground, comprehensive immigration reform.
Just as there needs to be enforcement at the border, Moss said the country needs an immigrant workforce.
“We know that the workforce is suffering,” Moss said at the panel, noting that she’s lobbied congressmen in Washington, D.C. to expand worker visas. “We can have H2-Ds for dairies. We can have H2-Cs for construction. We can have a better system.”
This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.