This has been going on in Texas and some other border states for nearly a century. Business interests, formerly agriculture but more recently including the hospitality industry, do not want to be on the hook for controlling immigration. They are happy to hire undocumented workers, pay them less than minimum wage and ignore labor laws.
They want cheap labor, and only give lip service to support for border control.
I agree and have often thought making work visas easy to get would help with illegal emigration. It would be easy for workers to hold employers accountable for reasonable pay and work conditions. They could call the police if there is trouble in the neighborhood. On the other hand they would be more expensive and less attractive to employers.
Propublica and The Texas Tribune co-published this article, and I originally used the Propublica link. On Propublica, both the regular title and the HTML title are too long, so I shortened and slightly modified the HTML title from
> Why Texas Won't Force Private Companies to Use E-Verify to Check Employment Authorization
to
> Why Texas Won't Force Companies to Use E-Verify for Employment Authorization
HN automatically changed the link (or someone at HN manually changed it) to the same article co-published by The Texas Tribune [TFA] with the title:
> Texas won't force private companies to use E-Verify to check workers' immigration status, despite leaders' tough talk
This has been going on in Texas and some other border states for nearly a century. Business interests, formerly agriculture but more recently including the hospitality industry, do not want to be on the hook for controlling immigration. They are happy to hire undocumented workers, pay them less than minimum wage and ignore labor laws.
They want cheap labor, and only give lip service to support for border control.
I agree and have often thought making work visas easy to get would help with illegal emigration. It would be easy for workers to hold employers accountable for reasonable pay and work conditions. They could call the police if there is trouble in the neighborhood. On the other hand they would be more expensive and less attractive to employers.
The US and Mexico have done so in the past with the Bracero Program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program
Propublica and The Texas Tribune co-published this article, and I originally used the Propublica link. On Propublica, both the regular title and the HTML title are too long, so I shortened and slightly modified the HTML title from
> Why Texas Won't Force Private Companies to Use E-Verify to Check Employment Authorization
to
> Why Texas Won't Force Companies to Use E-Verify for Employment Authorization
HN automatically changed the link (or someone at HN manually changed it) to the same article co-published by The Texas Tribune [TFA] with the title:
> Texas won't force private companies to use E-Verify to check workers' immigration status, despite leaders' tough talk
[TFA] https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...
[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/texas-e-verify-requiremen...
> An estimated 1.3 million Texas workers, more than 8% of the state’s work force, are here illegally, according to a 2023 analysis
That’s pretty much it.
One public PR policy, a different when the rubber hits the road.