Sponsors (13)
Official title: Permanently establish the E-Verify employment eligibility verification system, to mandate the use of E-Verify by all employers, and for other purposes.
Introduced May 21, 2026 by Katie Boyd Britt · Last progress May 21, 2026
The bill establishes a funded, nationwide E‑Verify regime aimed at reducing unauthorized employment and improving enforcement and record-correction, while substantially expanding federal data access, compliance burdens, penalties, and privacy risks that fall most heavily on immigrants and small employers.
Employers and workers nationwide: Mandatory, permanent E‑Verify plus expanded enforcement is likely to reduce unauthorized employment and related downward pressure on wages, improving overall labor-market integrity.
Workers and job applicants (including immigrants): The bill creates procedural protections—tentative nonconfirmation limits, anti-discrimination rules, time-limited final determinations, and narrow injunctive relief—reducing premature firing/offer rescissions and providing a path to correct errors.
Employers and DHS/SSA operations: The law funds and standardizes a permanent, nationwide E‑Verify system (including pilot testing and SSA funding arrangements), improving reliability, consistency, and system maintenance.
All residents (immigrants and citizens): Expanded federal access to DMV photos and SSA/IRS/DMV records and centralized E‑Verify checks increases collection and sharing of sensitive personal data, heightening privacy, surveillance, and identity-theft risks.
Small businesses and new employers: Nationwide mandatory E‑Verify, strict timing rules, and substantially higher penalties create significant compliance costs, administrative burdens, and legal risk that disproportionately burden small firms and startups.
Workers (including authorized noncitizen employees): System errors, false nonconfirmations, or identity mismatches can cause wrongful hiring denials or abrupt job loss while secondary verification proceeds, harming applicants' livelihoods.
Based on analysis of 15 sections of legislative text.
Makes E-Verify permanent and mandatory for most employers, expands DHS access to identity records (including DMV photos), increases penalties, and adds SSN anti‑fraud protections.
Makes the federal E-Verify electronic employment-eligibility system permanent and requires nearly all U.S. employers, recruiters, and referrers to use it on a phased schedule. The bill expands DHS access to federal and state identity records (including DMV photos), strengthens penalties and debarment authority for employers who fail to verify, creates SSA and DHS programs to block or suspend misuse of Social Security numbers, and requires new employer attestation and verification procedures tied to E-Verify responses. It conditions some federal economic development and CDBG funding on state/local cooperation in sharing DMV identity information, mandates audits of Social Security number misuse, preempts state or local bans on E-Verify use, and sets new timelines for confirmations, tentative nonconfirmations, and appeals procedures for workers and parents to limit SSN use in the system.