Thread: Catching Illegal Immigrants

Catching Illegal Immigrants

Winston-Salem, NC JOURNAL EDITORIAL STAFF

Published: June 20, 2008

It's good that the federal government is finally ending its long wink at the employment of illegal immigrants and cracking down on this erosion of law and order. But the government must make sure that its tools for doing so are state of the art -- and don't create more injustice. If the government wants to mandate the use of the computer checking system E-Verify, it should demand that the problems in that system be corrected.

Federal agencies are already required to use E-Verify. President Bush issued an executive order this month that would require federal contractors -- including Winston-Salem Industries for the Blind, Wake Forest University and HiPerf Inc., a Kernersville company -- to use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of workers. The order has to go through steps that include an open-comment period before it can take effect.

The system has already generated quite a few negative comments.

E-Verify has raised concerns in Congress, and among some business and civil-rights groups, the Journal's Bertrand M. Gutierrez reported in Sunday's Journal. Some of the critics want to stop illegal immigration as much as anybody else. But they say E-Verfiy, at least in its current form, is not the way to do it.

We said on this page back in February that E-Verify was worth investigating as a means of catching illegal immigrants trying to get jobs in local, state or federal governments. Now it turns out that the system needs a lot more work.

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona talked about the system's problems before a House immigration panel last week. Between October 2006 and March 2007, she said, about 3,000 U.S. citizens who emigrated from other countries were incorrectly red-flagged as unauthorized to work in the United States. She said business owners are finding the system "complicated, unreliable and burdensome" and "they are all experiencing the downfalls of using an inaccurate database with inadequate privacy protections."

One big problem is that E-Verify doesn't always catch fake IDs, critics say. "It has been proven time and time again … that the system is hugely susceptible to identity theft," said Michael Aitken of the Society for Human Resource Management.

Such problems have meant that immigration officials have raided some companies that are trying to comply with the government and use E-Verify. And God only knows the hassles that the flaws in the system have created for those legal immigrants whom it has wrongly nailed.

Local organizations that will be required to use E-Verfiy aren't complaining much, at least not publicly. But if they do have concerns with the system, now is the time to speak up.

It's good that the federal government, which holds the power to fix the broken immigration system, is finally taking some concrete steps to do that. But to be the right steps, they must be backed by a more accurate system of computer verification. Justice demands nothing less.
http://www2.journalnow.com/content/2008 ... s/?opinion

The single most effective weapon against illegal immigration is not what you’d first think of. It’s a piece of software called E-verify, an internet-based system operated jointly by the Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration. It allows businesses to check the legal status of its employees -- accurately, cheaply, and timely. It only takes seconds to get the answer! E-verify has literally given the American people the upper hand in the battle against illegal immigration. They have been able to prevail even when the money, power and the press has been against them. E-verify came into existence in 1997 as a limited pilot program and has been expanded, improved, and renewed over the years. But unless Congress acts to renew it soon, or preferably make it permanent, E-Verify shuts down in November and the single most effective tool against illegal immigration will disappear.

69,000 businesses are using E-Verify and it is 99.5 percent 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. That's 5 percent of the workers screened. The system has handled 4 million queries this year, including nearly a half-million from Arizona.

What scares its detractors (illegal alien huggers and supporters) is that it is very accurate so they rail against its use.

Debunking the “E-Verify Error Rateâ€

Keep going E-VERIFY!

E-Verify has raised concerns in Congress, and among some business and civil-rights groups, the Journal's Bertrand M. Gutierrez reported in Sunday's Journal. Some of the critics want to stop illegal immigration as much as anybody else. But they say E-Verfiy, at least in its current form, is not the way to do it.

You are not going to get a system with a higher than 95% accurate.....if you are one of the 5% get your backside down to the SS office and fix it!!

It's works that is the problem for people like Giffords!