Adopt mandatory E-Verify together with more work visas as a package
Immigration
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
The visa half of this package can only come from the government. The verification half runs through employers, who can enroll in E-Verify voluntarily today. Business lobbying is a documented obstacle to making it mandatory. The head of the Western Growers trade group publicly claimed credit for blocking a 2018 House vote on the Ag and Legal Workforce Act, and state business groups were still fighting E-Verify mandates in 2026. Both halves of this package already command majorities in both parties. No court, constitutional or technical barrier appears anywhere in the record, and the documented force that stopped the package when a House vote was in reach was the growers' own lobby. We therefore judge employer-side lobbying the linchpin holding the package back: owners changing what agricultural employers and their trade groups lobby for can release the block.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Immigration, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey October 2024
- Agriculture lobbyists are once again standing in the way of E-Verify, The Hill (opinion), 2018-09
- E-Verify requirements draw business pushback in some Republican states, Stateline, 2026-02-26
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated a March 2025 statement by nearly 100 institutional investors calling for comprehensive and just immigration reform, with recommended actions for Congress, companies and investors.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.