Talking about the minumum wage on Radio Derb back in April, I said:

If we're going to bully employers to pay a high minimum wage, why not let's bully them to use E-verify, which would kill off job opportunities for illegals much more reliably?

That got a riposte from a Radio Derb listener, scoffing at my faith in the efficacy of E-Verify.  I posted the riposte on the VDARE.com blog.

E-Verify, by design, does not prevent one illegal from being hired. It does not throw one illegal out of work.

If you have the time I recommend that you review the E-Verify manual for employers.

What you will learn is this:

You may not use it to screen applicants. You may only use it on new hires. Hiring an illegal who presents fake documents is not illegal, and rejecting fake documents makes you liable for national origin discrimination. (Google “document abuse.”)

Rejecting documents that have the wrong name makes you liable. Asking for documents before you have hired is illegal. Asking for different documents than the one the applicant presents is illegal . . . [E-Verify And The Deep Duplicity Of Our Government On Immigration; VDARE.com, April 18th 2016.]

That in turn brought a very instructive counter-post from "Federale," telling us that:

While E-Verify is not perfect, it is a very strong tool against the hiring of illegal aliens by unscrupulous and other employers. So rather than doomsay on the issue, welcome it as one more tool that President Trump can aggressively use against illegal immigration, because, in the end, E-Verify is only as good at the President behind it. It won’t work during the Obama Regime Administrative Amnesty.

But the best argument in favor of E-Verify is that the Treason Bar hates it and thinks it’s racist.  [Reassuring Derb And His Radio Derb Listener On E-Verify; VDARE.com, April 25th 2016.]

Here's the latest:  an email from a reader in a southern-border state whose spouse is in a management position hiring low-skilled kitchen workers.

He told me that he has stood there during hiring days and watched Hispanics give the HR rep SS card after SS card, cycling through a stack of 15 or 20 until they hit a SSN / birthday combination that isn't kicked back by E-Verify ... and then they get hired. Hooray. But there's nothing he can do about it, even knowing that — obviously! — legal residents don't have 20 different SS numbers.

The bottom line here seems to be that E-Verify could be a useful tool in the hands of an administration that was determined to take care that the people's laws on immigration and employment be faithfully executed.

It's just that we haven't had an administration like that for thirty years.