On July 31, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would reauthorize the E-Verify program for an additional five years; the program was previously slated to expire at the end of November of this year. This bill will now be forwarded to the Senate for their review and vote.

The bill, passed by a vote of 407-2, also includes a provision that would make sure the Department of Homeland Security provides reimbursements to the Social Security Administration for the use of their resources. In addition, the bill gives the Government Accountability Office the authority to conduct two studies of the E-Verify program: one study will look at the causes and effects of errors in the program; the other will look at the experiences of small businesses, nonprofit organizations and local municipalities that have used E-Verify to verify the employment eligibility of their workers.