E-Verify Debate Heats Up Among Idaho Republicans

The debate over E-Verify is heating up among Idaho Republicans as they battle over a bill that would require employers use the federal E-Verify database to exclude illegal migrants from jobs.

A long article by Investigate West reveals two Idaho Republicans in particular who are coming at the debate over illegals from opposite camps.

One, Idaho state Rep. Stephanie Mickelson, opposed the draft law requiring employers to use the E-Verify system. And the second, Ada County GOP vice chair Ryan Spoon, is a supporter of E-Verify to put an end to businesses hiring illegal aliens.

The article notes that Spoon targeted his fellow Republican for allegedly hiring illegals for her business, Mickelsen Farms.

Early in the Trump administration, Spoon used social media to urge his followers to report Mickelson for allegedly hiring illegals for her farm. Almost immediately ICE raided Mickelson Farms and one illegal alien was reportedly arrested.

“Americans across a broad spectrum of politics are really fed up with the illegal immigration issue,” Spoon said. “The tone has definitely changed there, and people’s willingness to confront that issue has changed.”

Mickelsen, though, claims that she has heard from other legislators who have quietly told her that they are unhappy with Spoon’s very overt and public tactics against her. She says that they have told her behind the scenes that they are “disgusted” by Spoon’s tactics.

She also plied the commonly heard line pushed by employers who want to hire illegals because Americans “don’t like to do farming jobs.”

Regardless, Mickelsen has voted for some of the immigration measures Spoon and his more hardline fellow Republicans support.

Mickelsen and her family also claim that they don’t support hiring illegals. But her critics argue that opposition to E-Verify is a contradiction for any Republican, and that supporting E-Verify would help ensure that illegals aren’t hired by employers who do not want to verify bogus claims of legality.

Idaho is not the only place this debate between Republicans is occurring. Several states are finding GOP lawmakers at loggerheads as some work to implement President Trump’s agenda, while others seek to slow walk immigration reform in response to the pleas from the business community to safeguard their ability to hire cheap migrant labor.

Republicans in Montana, Wyoming, and Oklahoma, for instance are also slowing down immigration reform or trying to find ways to limit ICE to detaining only criminal illegals and leaving illegal workers alone.

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