Thread: San Diego County Adopts E-Verify for County Employees

San Diego County Adopts E-Verify for County Employees

June 28, 2011 9:57 am PT
Jeff Schwilk
San Diego Immigration Policy Examiner

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 today to explore using E-Verify for their new hires and contractors. The measure was proposed by Supervisors Bill Horn and Dianne Jacob.

This measure was strongly endorsed by the SoCal Patriot Coalition and also the East County Chamber of Commerce. It was opposed by the “Immigrant Rights Consortiumâ€

[quote]This measure was strongly endorsed by the SoCal Patriot Coalition and also the East County Chamber of Commerce. It was opposed by the “Immigrant Rights Consortiumâ€

[quote="NoBueno"][quote]This measure was strongly endorsed by the SoCal Patriot Coalition and also the East County Chamber of Commerce. It was opposed by the “Immigrant Rights Consortiumâ€

REGION: County to explore using E-Verify for job candidates

By EDWARD SIFUENTES esifuentes@nctimes.com
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 7:00 pm

New county employees may soon have to pass an electronic immigration check before being hired, under a plan unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

The county will now explore using the federal E-Verify program to check potential employees' Social Security numbers and other information against federal databases.

Several immigrant and civil rights groups asked the supervisors to reconsider the proposal, saying that the E-Verify program can falsely identify job candidates as ineligible to work due to information errors.

The plan, proposed by Supervisors Dianne Jacob and Bill Horn, asked county administrators to review E-Verify and report back in 90 days whether the county should use it for new hires. The county is one of the region's largest employers with 16,000 workers.

The supervisors said the system is needed to make sure that only those eligible to work can get the jobs. If the program is proven successful, the supervisors said they may require contractors who do business with the county to use it in the future.

Jacob told the opponents of E-Verify that the system has a low error rate and that errors can be corrected.

"This gets from me the 'better late than never' award," Jacob said.

E-Verify, or the Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification System, is an online program that works by comparing employee information such as Social Security numbers, to records kept by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office study conducted between October 2009 and December 2010, E-Verify automatically confirmed 98.3 percent of the 15.6 million cases submitted during that period as eligible to work.

Also, 0.3 percent of cases were confirmed as eligible workers after initially being told they were ineligible to work.

Of the other 1.4 percent of cases, 1.3 percent were unchallenged and most of the others were unresolved cases.

The American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego and Imperial Counties submitted a letter to the supervisors opposing E-Verify.

In its letter, the ACLU pointed to various studies that have found problems with the system, including one study by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that found the system was able to find illegal workers only half of the time.

The ACLU letter said that legal immigrants and naturalized citizens are especially vulnerable to errors in the system.

"This law will harm authorized workers and lead to discrimination," said Cynthia Buiza. "It will hurt American and legally authorized workers in San Diego County, who are forced to take on the burden of persuading multiple administrative bureaucracies to fix their records if they want to keep their jobs."

Contact staff writer Edward Sifuentes at 760-740-3511

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcou ... 4cdf8.html

County moves toward E-Verify system

Use of federal database to check prospective workers’ legal status explored

By Christopher Cadelago, Reporter - County & Politics
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 5:53 p.m.

San Diego County took the first step toward requiring all new employees to be screened through a federal database used to check the legal status of prospective workers.

The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday directed county officials to explore the feasibility of using E-Verify during the hiring process. The web-based tool is used by a growing number of cities, counties, states and federal agencies to compare information from an individual’s eligibility form to data kept by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

“County government is one of the biggest employers in the region, and I think we have a responsibility to make sure we are hiring people who are eligible to work,â€

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