Thread: More Colorado employers use national system to verify status

Immigration checks rise
More Colorado employers use national system to verify status of new hires
By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post
Posted: 06/01/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT


Colorado employers are increasingly trying to weed out illegal workers.

The latest data show the number voluntarily using the national electronic system for verifying immigration status has more than doubled in two years — from 2,065 in May 2007 to 4,690 today.

Yet there are 155,000 employers in Colorado, and most get by simply by asking new hires for an ID, keeping a copy and signing a statement saying they checked.

A state law passed in 2006 requires examination of IDs but not verification, said Mike McArdle, director of the Colorado Division of Labor. Audits have found that, even under the looser standard, several employers might have failed to check adequately, he said.

Colorado employers "need to step up to the plate a little more and be more careful about who they are hiring and what they are doing in the hiring process," he said.

But he and other state officials stop short of recommending use of the federal "e-verify" system because the legislature hasn't required it.

As Congress and President Barack Obama move toward immigration reform, the gap in Colorado between employers that use e-verify and those that don't is replicated nationwide. About 125,700 out of 7 million U.S. employers are signed up. They check about 6 million, or one-tenth, of the nation's new hires a year.

Immigration experts have long argued that a consistent system for checking worker status is essential to prevent illegal immigration. Congress has appropriated $274 million and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has spent $183 million developing e-verify, which lets employers type in a name and Social Security number to find out whether a new hire is eligible for work.

No federal law mandates use of the system, and only Arizona has a law requiring its use.

The acting head of USCIS, which manages e-verify, touts the system as nearly capable of handling checks by all 7 million employers nationwide to verify the status of 60 million new hires a year.

The system "is ready to go" and 96 percent of queries lead to quick confirmation that a worker can be hired, said Michael Aytes, acting deputy director of USCIS, in a recent interview before the opening of a district headquarters in Denver.

"This is going to mean it's easier to enforce the laws this country has with respect to immigration . . . limiting immigration to what the law allows," Aytes said. "Immigration comes down to economics, job opportunities. . . . This is certainly going to be a critical piece of any immigration solution."

For years, employers testing the system, including dozens in Colorado, complained about errors. The system, which used to be called "Basic Pilot," couldn't tell whether an ID or Social Security number was fake.

But e-verify "has made a lot of progress," said Marc Rosenblum, senior analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington.

Nationwide, about 1,000 employers a week are registering to use the system, including about 25 a week in Colorado.

Evergreen-based Mitch's Green Thumb Landscaping — which relies primarily on workers from Mexico — began using the system two years ago, said Ivette Esquivel, office manager for the 40-employee firm. Its workers did the tree-planting, mulching and other landscaping work around Denver's new USCIS headquarters in a suburban office park.

The system screened out at least five workers this year as the company hired 10, she said.

Many landscapers do not use the system to verify worker status, Esquivel said.

"It takes maybe a couple minutes," she said.

Some men enter her office looking for work, see the sign that indicates immigration status will be checked and quickly leave, she said.

"A lot of time they go: 'Oh! OK. I'll come back.' That often means they may not be verifiable. They say: 'Oh! I left my ID at home.' And then they don't come back."

Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com



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Pass the SAVE Act

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Pass the SAVE Act

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