Proposed by the Young Republicans of Texas as the standing position of this organization on the enforcement of lawful employment, and transmitted to the 90th Texas Legislature as our recommendation for the session convening in January 2027.
WHEREAS, we are the generation now entering the Texas workforce, and we speak on this question not on behalf of an industry or an interest but on our own behalf, as the people to whom its consequences will fall; and
WHEREAS, the entry-level positions through which a young Texan once acquired a trade, a wage, and the means to start a household are today filled in substantial part by labor that could not lawfully be hired, and a generation shut out of the first rung of the ladder is denied thereby the formation of skill, the founding of families, and the ability to remain in the communities that raised it; and
WHEREAS, the delegates of this Party, assembled in state convention in 2024, voted mandatory E-Verify for all Texas employers, with significant penalties for violators, into the top eight Legislative Priorities of the Republican Party of Texas; and
WHEREAS, the delegates of this Party, assembled again in state convention in Houston in June 2026, adopted Border Enforcement among the top eight Legislative Priorities for the 90th Legislature, expressly including the mandating of E-Verify; and
WHEREAS, the Senate of the 89th Legislature passed Senate Bill 324, requiring participation in E-Verify by state contractors, political subdivisions, and private employers, by a vote of nineteen to twelve, and an identical measure, House Bill 3210, was filed in the House; and
WHEREAS, Senate Bill 324 was referred to the House Committee on State Affairs and was never brought before the members, so that no Representative was required to record a vote, and the Party’s own stated priority was defeated not in open debate but by silence; and
WHEREAS, this Party does not adopt legislative priorities as suggestions, and an officeholder who allows a priority of the Republican Party of Texas to die without a vote owes the grassroots of this Party an explanation; and
WHEREAS, Texas already requires E-Verify of its own agencies and public universities by statute, and of many state contractors by executive order, so that this State has judged the system workable wherever it controls the payroll or the purse, and has declined to extend it to the private economy, where the great majority of unlawful employment is found; and
WHEREAS, at least nine states, most of them Republican-led, among them Arizona, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, require E-Verify of private employers, so that Texas trails on this question the very states it claims to lead; and
WHEREAS, the Texas business that obeys the law is placed at a disadvantage against the competitor whose bid is lower because its payroll is unlawful, so that our present policy operates as a penalty upon honesty and a subsidy to those who evade the law; and
WHEREAS, no employer can abandon that practice alone without losing the work to a rival who does not, so that the firm wishing to comply is held in a condition it cannot escape by its own act, and only a rule binding every employer alike can release it; and
WHEREAS, we are told that this requirement would burden business, though E-Verify is furnished by the federal government at no charge and returns a result within seconds, and the burden complained of is not the cost of the system but the loss of the advantage it would end; and
WHEREAS, an unlimited supply of low-cost labor removes from any firm the incentive to invest in equipment, in training, and in the improvement of its processes, and a Texas economy built on the cheapest available hand rather than the most productive worker is a Texas economy building on sand; and
WHEREAS, wages rise under one condition only, which is that an employer cannot obtain the workers it requires at the wage it is presently offering, and no program of training, tuition assistance, or workforce partnership will substitute for that condition; and
WHEREAS, the claim that certain work will not be done by Texans is a claim about the wages and conditions presently offered for that work, and not about the character or capacity of the people of this State; and
WHEREAS, the obstacle to this measure has not been the Republican voters of Texas, who have twice made it a Priority of this Party, but a narrow interest within our own coalition, and that gap is the reason a measure endorsed by the grassroots has yet to reach a floor; and
WHEREAS, the case for this measure has been pressed alike by conservative legislators and by the organized building trades, whose common interest is that no firm should win work by underbidding those who obey the law.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, That the Young Republicans of Texas affirms that the labor market of this State should be composed of persons lawfully authorized to work within it, and that verification of that authorization is a duty every employer owes to its competitors, to its workers, and to the public; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That we call upon the 90th Legislature to take up, as a priority of the session convening in January 2027 and in fulfillment of a Legislative Priority this Party has already adopted, a measure of the character of Senate Bill 324 of the 89th Legislature, and upon the House of Representatives to bring such a measure to the floor and dispose of it by a recorded vote, so that the people of Texas may know where their Representatives stand; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That such a measure should apply to every employer in this State without exemption by industry, by firm size, by form of business organization, or by class of employment, and should extend to labor obtained through subcontractors, staffing agencies, and independent contracting arrangements, no business being shielded from responsibility for the unlawful labor of a firm it contracts with to perform the work; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That penalties should attach to the failure to verify and not to knowing violation alone, and that enforcement should not rest upon the discretion of licensing agencies nor reach only those trades for which the State happens to issue a license, but should apply by its own force to every employer alike; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the employer who verifies in good faith should receive a presumption in its favor in any proceeding, and should bear no liability for an error of the federal system it was directed to rely upon; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That we call upon every Republican candidate for the Texas House and Senate to state publicly whether they agree, disagree, or remain undecided upon the Party’s Legislative Priority mandating E-Verify, and upon every county chair to make those responses known to the Republicans of that county; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That the first claim upon work in Texas belongs to those lawfully entitled to perform it, and that where a young Texan leaving high school, trade school, or military service cannot find entry-level work at a wage sufficient to support a household, this State does not have a labor shortage but a labor policy, and one this Party has been given the votes to change; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That we ask the officeholders of this Party to weigh every labor and immigration measure before them by a single question, which is whether it makes it easier or harder for a young Texan to get a first job, learn a trade from it, and build a life in the community that raised them; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That this resolution shall stand as the position of the Young Republicans of Texas until amended or rescinded by its members, and shall be furnished to any candidate, officeholder, or member of the public who asks where we stand on this question; and, be it further
RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be transmitted to the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the chair and members of the House Committee on State Affairs, the chair and members of the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce, every Republican member of the 90th Legislature, the State Republican Executive Committee, and the Republican county chairs of this State.