Thread: E-Verify IDs 200K entrants nationally

Tucson Region
E-Verify IDs 200K entrants nationally
But feds to fine-tune system for accuracy
By Becky Pallack
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.13.2008
An improved E-Verify system is working well to identify who is allowed to work in the United States — and to identify illegal immigrants, the head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Thursday.
Jonathan "Jock" Scharfen, who has been the acting director of the agency for about two months, was in Tucson to talk about continued efforts to make the Web-based verification system for employment eligibility more accurate.
"E-Verify has identified 200,000 individuals (nationwide) who were trying to gain work in the United States who were not eligible, legally, to work," he said. That's 5 percent of the workers screened. The system has handled 4 million queries this year, including nearly a half-million from Arizona, he said.
State law requires all Arizona employers to use E-Verify for newly hired workers. About 25,000 employers in Arizona are using the system, nearly 18 percent of all employers.
Here's what you need to know about changes the agency is making to key immigration systems.
Improved E-Verify
Naturalization data were added to the E-Verify system last month, eliminating some problems the system had in recognizing naturalized citizens as eligible to work, Scharfen said.
The problem was that many naturalized citizens never updated their status with Social Security.
In the past month, the improved system saved an extra trip to the Social Security Administration offices for 3,500 naturalized citizens. A direct link between the two agencies should be established in fiscal year 2009, he said.
The agency also eliminated a two-week lag in entering data collected at ports of entry into the system, he said.
The database already includes about 15 million photos from green cards and other work- authorization documents. The agency would like to add Arizona driver's license photos and passport photos in the near future, federal immigrations official Scharfen said.
"That would improve E-Verify accuracy and help us fight identity theft," he said.
Shorter naturalization wait
By October, the estimated wait after applying for citizenship will be "substantially less than 10 months" in Tucson, Scharfen said, revising earlier estimates of more than 16 months.
The agency is hiring 3,000 more employees nationwide to help speed up the process. His goal is a five-month process.
An increase in the application fee and the heating immigration reform debate last year led to a "remarkable, historic surge in the naturalization applications," Scharfen said.
"In fiscal year '07, we ended up having 1.4 million naturalization applications" he said.
"To put that in context, the year before, we had received a total of 730,000, so that was doubling the naturalization applications for the agency countrywide."
Those who applied in fiscal year 2007 will be processed by Oct. 1. The agency processed about 750,000 applications last year, but will be able to handle about 1 million this year, he said.
"Last year in Tucson, for instance, we did 2,456 naturalizations," Scharfen said.
"This year, because of an increase in staffing and other process changes, and frankly just a lot of hard work by CIS employees in Tucson, we're going to increase that number by well over 1,000."
Military naturalizations are a special priority. In the past few weeks, teams of agents from Tucson have begun visiting Fort Huachuca to help members of the military apply.
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"E-Verify has identified 200,000 individuals (nationwide) who were trying to gain work in the United States who were not eligible, legally, to work," he said. That's 5 percent of the workers screened. The system has handled 4 million queries this year, including nearly a half-million from Arizona, he said.

So 1 in 20 and most employers still don't use E-Verify.

Dixie