Rep. Thomas Masse (R-KY) has declared he will vote against the Secure the Border Act (HR 2) scheduled for a vote this week at the United State House of Representatives. Massie’s reason offered for opposing the bill is that the bill includes a mandate that employers use E-Verify when hiring people.
Speaking last month at a House committee meeting, Massie explained that he opposes people having to go through US government databases to exercise “basic fundamental human rights,” whether the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database to exercise the right to bear arms or the E-Verify database “to exercise your basic fundamental human right to trade labor for sustenance, to trade labor for money, to support your family.” Massie further noted that these and others among the many US government databases, including the No Fly List, have “all been put in place in the name of fairness or safety or something that sounds good, but, at the end of the day, it’s used for other purposes.” “There’s never a time for E-Verify,” concluded Massie. You can watch Massie’s address to fellow committee members here.
Massie, a member of the Ron Paul Institute’s Advisory Board, is continuing the effort in the House against E-Verify in which Ron Paul engaged until leaving the House in January of 2013.
Outside political office, Paul has continued arguing against E-Verify, including via editorials you can read here, here, and here.
By the way, HR 2 also provides for a big step toward the US going to war in Mexico. I wrote about that in an article earlier this week that can be read here.
Reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.