One presenter – Julie Myers Wood – is not only a lawyer but the former head of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Is it any wonder that a huge part of her presentation was about how wonderful E-Verify is and how everyone in the room should be using it? Are there risks to NOT using E-Verify? Yes. But there are also risks to USING E-Verify, as SHRM well knows, since they are on record as being opposed to the use of E-Verify and any additional government requirements to use it (I support SHRMs position on this issue). It’s interesting that she didn’t mention those opposite risks, if her job is to discuss risk assessment.

The second presenter (in a different session), Stuart Brock, although he came down on the “use E-Verify ” side, admitted that he formed that opinion based on his client’s needs, and discussed the Westat studies which show the problems with E-Verify. He was balanced and gave people FACTS. He admitted there were two sides to the issue. He’s a lawyer, and he also admitted that if you put 100 lawyers in a room, you will get 150 opinions about what to do. That was a very different approach from most of the other presenters, who just said, “don’t”.

You can’t tell people to just go to another conference. How many other conferences are going to talk about immigration law compliance?

There are risks in crossing a busy street. You tell the 5 year old not to do it at all, unless an adult is there to hold his/her hand. But you tell the 13 year old to be careful and try to give them guidelines, because you know that there are great risks in making a 13 year old so fearful that they will never cross the street.

In this conference, the attendees were often treated like they were 5, and not 13. See MY blog at http://www.joanginsberg.com for more on this conference and this pervasive problem. I hope to get with some other attorneys and develop a more balanced approach for the future.