Meat, Poultry Groups Against the SAVE Act
US - The meat, poultry and livestock sectors came together this week to inform Congress that the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act, introduced by Representative Heath Shuler and Senator Mark Pryor in November of 2007, would cause serious issues in the meat and poultry industries.According to industry figures, the SAVE Act, while an attempt to implement more effective immigration enforcement, will prove incapable of effective implementation, severely harm U.S. businesses and fail to address the problem of document fraud that defeats the current employment verification system. This proposed legislation makes the use of the currently broken Basic Pilot/E-Verify program mandatory and calls for reverification of the entire workforce within four years of enactment.
Meat, poultry and livestock associations including American Meat Institute, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, National Meat Association, National Pork Producers Council and the National Turkey Federation are genuinely concerned and have developed an alternative solution. On September 30, 2008, the E-Verify program will be up for reauthorization and the group is advocating an extension and improvement of the E-verify program. Some of these improvements include leaving the E-Verify program voluntary, addressing the issue of identity theft through the use of biometrics and requiring the Department of Homeland Security to provide “real time” status of potential employees.
For more details on the SAVE Act as well as an outline of the alternative solution, please refer to the letter that was sent to Capitol Hill this week.
Further Reading
- | You can view the letter by clicking here. |