A survey of more than 400 members nationwide, conducted between February 25 and March 18, 2013, shows that America's smallest businesses - the self-employed and micro-businesses (with ten or less employees) - find the issue of immigration reform important and are willing to comply with new reform regulations.

"Our survey clearly demonstrates that small business owners and self-employed Americans want Congress to come up with a sensible, bipartisan immigration reform solution. Not only do small business owners overwhelmingly want to comply with new reform measures, but also want Congress to come up with a balanced approach for how to pay for things such as a verification process," said Kristie Arslan, President and CEO of the NASE.

Some of the key findings from the online survey of 432 NASE members include:

"¢ Over 77% indicated that immigration reform was important responding to the question: "How important is immigration reform to you and your business". 26.6% responded "extremely important; 26.4% responded "very important"; 24.3% responded "slightly important".

"¢ When asked "When should an employer have to comply with an employment verification system", 58.8% of respondents replied that "anyone who has either full or part time employees".

"¢ 79% of the respondents indicated that they would not pay to outsource employment verification on the immigration status of all new hires, should it become mandatory.

"We want to comply with any new immigration requirements as long as they are not burdensome and impact our businesses and bottom-lines," said Stephen McNeilly, owner of ServiceProz, Inc., and a member of the NASE Member Council. "The E-Verify system we currently already use takes too long to verify employment. We need a system that is efficient, easy to use and isn't complex."

Source: NASE