Thread: GA-Employers must check immigration status

Employers must check immigration status

Published: 07/07/2009
By Talia Mollett
Marietta Daily Journal staff writer

MARIETTA - All public employers and employers who do government contract work must now use the Employment Eligibility Verification program to ensure new hires are legally eligible to work.

New requirements under the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act went into effect last week. They apply only to new hires and do not apply to private companies that do not do government contract work.

The E-Verify program, formerly known as Basic Pilot, is a Web-based system that electronically verifies the employment eligibility of newly hired employees.

The new requirements fall under Senate Bill 529, which was spearheaded by Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) and passed in the 2006 legislative session. Previously, only companies with 100 or more employees were required to use E-Verify. Now, every employer under the guidelines must register for the system, Rogers said.

"We really needed to work with the large employers at first to make sure there were no bugs in the system. We phased it so now it includes all companies," he said.

When the program was first implemented, it pertained only to companies with 500 or more employees.

"We have had and still have a serious problem with illegal immigrants coming into Georgia," Rogers said. "We can't have a legal system where one employer breaks the law and they're rewarded economically for breaking it and another employer that follows the law is hurt by it," Rogers said. "We can't have a free-market society that rewards companies that break the law."

Rogers said using the system is not new to employers across America and locally. Cobb County spokesman Robert Quigley said the county has been using E-Verify for several years.

"Anytime a company wants to bid on government work for Cobb, in Cobb, they have to verify for us the affidavit that they are signed up to use E-Verify," Quigley said. "Our bid process requires you to be a part of it and we've also been using it for all new hires."

Verifying the eligibility of a new hire takes only about one minute, said Angela Dearing, human resources coordinator for FlightWorks, Inc. FlightWorks, Inc. is an aircraft management agency with an executive terminal at McCollum Field in Kennesaw.

"It is very simple to use. I haven't noticed any drawbacks to E-Verify, but we haven't hired a lot of people lately," Dearing said. "I didn't have a problem running any new hires through the system in the past though."

There are about 550 business registered for the E-Verify system in Cobb's six cities, according to Bill Wright, spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

E-Verify is a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the program, according to the agency's Web site.

For more information on E-Verify, go to www.uscis.gov.

http://www.mdjonline.com/content/index/ ... 36131.html

With many of the millions of illegals in this country working for small businesses such as construction and landscaping companies, hopefully these people will be made to e-verify as well. The majority of illegal aliens aren't doing government contract work, I suspect.