I know little about a House Judiciary Committee hearing tomorrow on E-Verify, but the title of it has a peculiar odor: “Document Fraud in Employment Authorization: How an E-Verify Requirement Can Help.”

You see, the immigration policies Congress has set are the source of the problem. Document fraud is made more likely by employment authorization requirements meant to enforce them, which are also—let’s remember—intrusive and costly business regulation.

In my Cato Policy Analysis “Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification: Franz Kafka’s Solution to Illegal Immigration,” I wrote about restrictive immigration policies and the intrusive “internal enforcement” programs they have spawned. In a section titled “Counterattacks and Complications,” I examined how workers and employers will collude to avoid and frustrate worker verification. Mandatory E-Verify will increase identity and document fraud because it makes these frauds profitable. Trying to solve this problem, the government will naturally gravitate toward more powerful identity systems, including biometric identity cards and tracking.

Sure enough, House Judiciary Committee chairman Lamar Smith’s bill, the “Legal Workforce Act,” has a “pilot program” for a biometric national identity card.

When committing fraud is the pathway to productive employment, you know something is out of whack. Among the things out of whack are: too-restrictive immigration policy, internal enforcement, and E-Verify. This is supposed to be a free country where willingness and ability are the keys to employment.