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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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Employers are not the villain here - employers are legally required to accept any "reasonably genuine" documents that appear to relate to the employee, even if they are not ultimately confirmed by e-verify.

Okay, and why don't we have mandatory e-verify despite a Republican Congress and white house?

All of the obstacles you mention could easily be cleared with legislation.

I agree that it would be great to dismantle antidiscrimination law. It is not true that this could be "easily cleared with legislation" - among other things one would also need to eliminate leftist judges and other instruments of left wing anti democratic power.

Mandatory e-verify has nothing to do with discrimination. By definition, if you e-verify everyone, you aren't discriminating.

By definition, if you e-verify everyone, you aren't discriminating.

You're assuming court's follow actual logic. If "we apply this to everyone, so it can't be discrimination" the concept of "disparate impact" would not exist.

To be absolutely clear on this point - your position is that we don't have mandatory e-verify because Congress and the president know that the courts would make it de facto illegal to hire a person without work authorization? Do I understand you correctly?

My argument is that your previous argument is wrong, I made no statements about why no one tried passing mandatory e-verify. Where did you even get the idea?

I had the mistaken impression that you were responding to the substance of my argument. I apologize!

Let's try again.

Your argument is that mandatory e-verify would be ruled as illegal discrimination and that companies would be forced to hire people without work authorization?

I had the mistaken impression that you were responding to the substance of my argument.

I was. The substance of your argument was that e-verify can't have anything to do with discrimination by definition, because it would be applied equally to everyone, correct?

If not, I'm the one that should apologize. Though I hope you understand where my confusion comes from, given that you wrote "mandatory e-verify has nothing to do with discrimination. By definition, if you e-verify everyone, you aren't discriminating."

Your argument is that mandatory e-verify would be ruled as illegal discrimination and that companies would be forced to hire people without work authorization?

I have no way of knowing whether it would be ruled as such or not. The American legal system lets the judges rule whatever the hell they want. I'm just pointing out they already dismissed the "because it's applied to everyone" argument in another case.

You are perhaps correct in the broader sense of "if you do X to everyone it's not discrimination". However, you are obviously wrong in the narrower sense of "if you do work authorization verification to everyone it's not discrimination," which is the one that I was claiming.

It is completely standard for large American employers to do I-9 verification for all employees. My employer has in fact verified my citizenship twice because they somehow fucked it up the first time. This has never been ruled as illegal discrimination and, again, is completely standard for the kinds of businesses that don't employ illegal immigrants. Now, I realize that you can't be expected to know this since you are a Belgian (?). Nevertheless, the confidence about American discrimination jurisprudence in the context of work authorization seems misplaced.