Employer use of federal E-Verify program on the rise

Updated 5m ago By William M. Welch, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — Construction company CEO David Dominguez no longer worries about inadvertently hiring workers who are in this country illegally. That's because he uses E-Verify, the federal program that allows him to quickly check the legal status of potential employees.

Dominguez, who builds residential interiors in Arizona and California, said that as word gets around about the program, job applicants without legal status avoid businesses such as his, Andrew Lauren Co., which use E-Verify.

"The system works," Dominguez said. His San Diego-based company has been using E-Verify for several years in hiring office workers and laborers.

The voluntary federal program has seen a rapid growth in use this year, Department of Homeland Security records show. More than 1,000 employers are signing up each week on average, and employment checks are approaching 200,000 a week.

Use rises each year

"If the goal is not to hire illegal citizens, then you should have it," Dominguez said.

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Halfway through this year 5.5 million worker checks have been made by employers through the E-Verify online service. In 2008, 6.6 million checks were made, twice the number in 2007.

"From a year ago, it's just tremendous" growth, said William Wright, spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, the federal agency that administers the program.

The approximately 129,000 participating employers, representing half a million business locations, remain a tiny portion of the national total, however. In all, about 6 million businesses employ more than 115 million people in the USA.

In fiscal year 2008, Immigration and Customs Enforcement made more than 1,100 criminal arrests associated with workplace investigations, according to its website. Of those arrests, more than 100 were business owners, managers or supervisors.

Cynthia Buiza, policy director for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said her group believes that potentially more than 3 million legal immigrants a year could be misidentified by the system and denied work.

She said employers could abuse the program by using the threat of conducting an E-Verify check to intimidate workers.

Doris Meissner, former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, said the Department of Homeland Security has worked hard to improve the system's accuracy.

Wright said the department has found 3.5% of names checked through the system are not authorized to work.

Some don't trust system

Wright said errors, reflecting a mismatch between a legal worker whose information does not correctly show that status, occur in four out of every 1,000 cases.

The future of E-Verify remains in doubt in Washington, where some immigrant-rights groups such as Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, have criticized it as error-prone and a threat to civil liberties. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has sued to stop a plan to make use a requirement for certain employers.

The Obama administration recently postponed for a fourth time a requirement that all companies with federal contracts use the program to verify the work status of new hires. The requirement is now scheduled for Sept. 8.

Wright said the delay was to give the new administration time to study the program.

Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., head of the Immigration Reform Caucus, said his group of mostly Republican lawmakers is demanding a fuller explanation.

Bilbray said the program, which began as a test in 1997, has proven a successful way for employers who want to hire only documented immigrant workers to confirm that they are doing so.

"This protects the legitimate employer," Bilbray said.

The program is free for employers, and most checks are completed in a few seconds.

Dominguez said he would like to see all employers required to use the system.

"In my opinion, it's the only thing to do to solve the illegal alien problem," he said. "You don't have to deport anyone."

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