Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Immigration Crackdown In The American Workplace: Explaining Variation In E-Verify Policy Adoption Across The U.S. States, Benjamin Newman, Christopher Johnston, April Johnson (Strickland)

Faculty and Research Publications

Immigration remains a powerful and recurrent feature of American politics. Of the issues related to immigration, controversy over government policy for controlling illegal immigration occupies a central position in the debate. One increasingly important and prevalent type of control policy that has received little scholarly attention is worksite employment eligibility enforcement, otherwise known as E-Verify Laws. In the present article, we analyze variation in E-Verify policy adoption across the U.S. states, approaching the topic from multiple theoretical perspectives and testing several hypotheses pertaining to policy enactment. Our analysis points to the critical role of proportionate change in a state’s immigrant …