Thomas Mott Osborne: “as an original cosponsor of similar House legislation, I encourage my colleagues to support S. 1685, the Basic Pilot…”

“as an original cosponsor of similar House legislation, I encourage my colleagues to support S. 1685, the Basic Pilot Extension Act of 2003. This important legislation would extend for five years the Basic Pilot Verification Program, which is a voluntary program that employers use in conjunction with the Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services (BCIS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to confirm employment eligibility in my home state of Nebraska, among others. This pilot, which started in November 1997, involves verification checks of the SSA and the BCIS databases of all newly hired employees regardless of citizenship. Unfortunately, the Basic Pilot program is scheduled to terminate on November 30th of this year. The agricultural economy of Nebraska's Third District relies heavily on immigrant labor. Employers across my district have told me that they want to comply with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ aliens not eligible to work, and required employers to verify documents of new workers. However, a simple visual check of these documents by employers will not tell them if these are in fact counterfeit documents, and that this potential new hire is in fact an illegal alien. I have heard from many business people in the Third District about their need for the Basic Pilot program.”