How Does Implementation of a Restrictive Immigration Policy Impact the U.S. Workforce? Evaluating E-Verify through a Social Justice Framework

Background and Purpose:  In the context of an ever-increasing globalized economy, does the concept of being a “legal” citizen as a prerequisite to participation in the U.S. workforce make sense?  The United States currently has free trade agreements (FTAs) in place with 20 countries and is presently working on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), which would increase the total number of countries with whom the U.S. has free trade agreements with to 24.  The mission of the United States Trade Representative, an Executive Office of the President, includes “. . . opening markets throughout the world to create new opportunities and higher living standards for families, farmers, manufacturers, workers, consumers, and businesses.” 

Through the theoretical lens of cosmopolitan global distributive justice (CGDJ), this study evaluates E-Verify, an anti-immigrant employment program that exists for the sole purpose of excluding those without legal citizenship from legally participating in the United States workforce.  Specifically, this study examined variation in state-level implementation of E-Verify, categorized as being either weakly—or strongly—aligned with cosmopolitan global distributive justice (CGDJ) and how this variation may have predicted important workforce outcomes in four U.S. states.

Methods:   We conduct a series of interrupted times series analyses using the Quarterly Workforce Indicator (QWI) data, which is the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) linked employer-employee microdata publicly available through the U.S. Census.

The four states chosen for this study were Arizona, California, Florida, and Illinois.  The four industry categories chosen for this study were: (a) All Industries; (b) Accommodation and Food Service; (c) Agriculture, Forestry, Hunting and Fishing; and (d) Construction.  The eight indicators chosen for this study were: (a) beginning of quarter employment counts; (b) counts of reference quarter employment or “flow” employment; (c) counts of new hires (d) estimated number of workers whose job with a specific employer ended; (e) rate at which stable jobs begin and end (f) estimated number of jobs gained; (g) average monthly earnings of employees who worked on the first day of the reference quarter; and (h) average monthly earnings of newly stable employees.  

Results:  Findings suggest the more strongly a state aligns with a cosmopolitan approach to global distributive justice, the more growth that state saw in the area of overall employment growth.  Findings also suggest that stronger alignment with global distributive justice may predict increases in turnover and separations, while weaker alignment may predict decreases in turnover and separations.  Common across the states included in this study, Accommodation and Food Service was the industry most impacted by E-Verify implementation, with Construction also significantly impacted in Arizona.

Conclusions and Implications:  Significant job loss occurred when E-Verify implementation strategies were not aligned with cosmopolitan global distributive justice. “Off-the-books” employment and/or employer/employee relocation are two likely explanations for this outcome.  Both economic implications and implications associated with “good citizenship” are discussed.