From Chris Strohm writing for the  National Journal

A coalition of business groups continued to wage a legal battle today as a government mandate took effect requiring federal contractors to verify the immigration status of employees working on government projects.

Of course the ACLU has a problem with this.  The Washington Independent quotes an ACLU statement:

In the middle of the toughest job market in decades, the administration has chosen to erect another roadblock to gainful employment for U.S. workers. Mandating all federal contractors to use E-Verify could encourage contractors to fire workers based on erroneous database discrepancies and to avoid hiring workers who are perceived to be foreign born. This flawed Bush-era policy, now adopted by the current administration, will only hurt the American workforce without improving our nation’s immigration enforcement practices.

“U.S. workers” is obfuscation of the facts.  What they are talking about here are illegal aliens, not legal aliens and US Citizens.

This program is a good thing for our country, our unemployed workers and our economy.  If workers are here illegally they should not be employed.  Period.  The stats for the success of the re-configured e-verify are acceptable.  From the NPR site:

Years Of Refining The Program

The rule does give companies 30 days after a contract is awarded to enroll employees.

Spokesman Bill Wright of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that administers E-Verify, says the Web site is quicker and more precise than older methods.

Earlier versions were not so accurate: At one point 20 percent of all workers were flagged as illegal. But after years of refining the program, Wright says, the rate is down to 3 percent. And less than one-tenth of those are mistakes, such as wrong numbers or wrong names, rather than illegal workers.

“That basically means 2.8 percent — just under the 3 — were found to be not authorized to work in the United States,” Wright says. “Translation: E-Verify system works. That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do.”

Predictably, some people are unhappy about it.  Unhappy because it will either cost them money to check the legality of their existing workforce or cost them money to hire legal American workers to replace the illegal aliens who are currently working for them on government projects.  Very patiriotic don’t you think?  Maybe if they didn’t hire illegal aliens in the first place they wouldn’t have this problem – because WE wouldn’t have this problem.  Quit whining and play by the rules.  It is especially egregious to me that illegal aliens are working for government contractors.

This system should be required by every employer in the United States. And severe penalties should come into play if illegals are hired.  If the didn’t have jobs, they’d go back where they came from and maybe our healthcare system wouldn’t be overtaxed and ridiculously priced to cover the cost of illegal alien who use it and don’t pay.  If the illegaliens are removed the picture, there are enough jobs available bring unemployment down to normal levels.  They would voluntarily remove themselves if they couldn’t work here.  We wouldn’t have to round them up.  At the borders we could concentrate on terrorists, drugs and gang members instead of being overwhelmed with trying to hold back the tsunami of illegaliens coming here to take jobs from Americans and suck dry the healthcare system.