U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords led the renewal Thursday evening of an immigration enforcement program that just three months ago she characterized as "disastrous" if it didn't include substantive changes.
The Giffords-sponsored measure — the first and only stand-alone immigration bill to be passed by the current Democratic Congress — is a five-year extension of E-Verify, an online system through which employers check the legal status of new workers.
The system is a requirement under Arizona's employer-sanctions law, one that Giffords has called "draconian" and wants to override eventually with a federal program.
As recently as May, Giffords, a freshman who represents Southeastern Arizona, called E-Verify "complicated, unreliable and burdensome." Faced with the prospect of a 10-year extension, Giffords introduced her own bill at the time to scrap E-Verify and institute a new program — one that's apparently used to track deadbeat dads.
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"I respectfully remind you that if Congress does nothing or simply extends E-Verify without much-needed reform, it will be disastrous," Giffords said in a testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee in May.
An aide to Giffords said that when her original reform bill went nowhere, Giffords opted instead to renew E-Verify, stressing two "improvements" and the five-year extension as opposed to a decade.
Without the renewal, the E-Verify pilot program was set to expire in October. Giffords' bill means it will stay in place.
"In the face of the ticking clock of the legislative session, and the need to do something about immigration, the changes that she proposed were the best way to go forward at this point," said Giffords' spokesman, C.J. Karamargin.
The bill won bipartisan support — 407 votes in a body of 435.
But the changes weren't enough to win over neighboring Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva, who voted "present" when Giffords' bill came up for a vote Thursday evening.
And though a Giffords press release touted her success in bringing "common-sense changes" to the law, her bill doesn't specifically address the concerns she raised in May, when she said Arizona businesses found the system "confusing and time-consuming."
And it doesn't contain most of the changes she said were needed in order to address those complaints.
It does, however, call for a government study and requires the Department of Homeland Security to provide timely reimbursements to the Social Security Administration, the agency that provides information for the program to work.
"The goal is to come up with a reliable system and that's why reauthorizing the program for five instead of 10 years is a step in the right direction," Karamargin said.
Whether E-Verify, voluntary on the federal level, remains mandatory in Arizona is up in the air. A November ballot initiative will ask voters to ease the restrictions in that law, providing immunity to firms that either use the E-Verify system or simply comply with existing federal laws about checking the identity of new workers.
Nevertheless, Thursday's passage could provide Giffords with an important political win three months before voters in Congressional District 8 decide whether to grant her a second term.
Illegal immigration was the driving theme in her 2006 race, and Giffords, who established a largely left-of-center record on such issues during her time in the Arizona Legislature, used a more conservative message during her congressional bid. Until now, she had failed to gain much traction on the issue.
A spokesman for Giffords' Republican competitor, state Senate President Tim Bee, characterized Giffords' sponsorship of the bill as a switch — though one with which Bee agrees.
"We're glad that she finally recognized that Tim Bee's position has been the right one all along," said Bee spokesman Tom Dunn. "We're glad that she's finally on board with it."
Dunn pointed to the fact Bee co-sponsored the 2007 employer sanctions bill, passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano, and said Bee believes E-Verify is reliable.
Giffords, however, has taken a different position on the state law, stating in May that the "E-Verify system coupled with the draconian sanctions under Arizona law have businesses praying for relief from the federal government."
Anne Seiden, a spokeswoman for the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that although the business community sees problems with the E-Verify program, "the use is only going to increase." And she said at least the five-year extension in Giffords' bill is better than the original 10.
"Right now, we would be most interested in just making sure that the door is left open so that E-verify can be adjusted and modified," Seiden said.
