Feds mandate expanded use of controversial E-Verify
Feds mandate expanded use of controversial E-Verify program to check the backgrounds of immigrant workers
Posted by sjorr June 16, 2008 12:30PM
The federal government has begun requiring vetting the immigration status of millions of workers by a controversial online data search system that has been criticized as inaccurate and easily abused.
The E-Verify system, a voluntary program until last week, instantly compares workers' identification information with millions of records stored at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.
The government announced it was making the program mandatory for employees of all federal contractors, and a key lawmaker is working to expand the mandate to include all the nation's employers.
To immigrant advocates, the system was troublesome enough when it was voluntary. Making it mandatory for federal contractors, they say, will only make a bad situation worse by forcing its use in industries that make up a $400 billion-plus sector of the economy.
The advocates charge the system is full of inaccurate data, that it generates false negative results, that employers abuse the system and that it does nothing to address the increasing need for workers to fill low-wage jobs.
"The system doesn't work. It has been demonstrated time and again to be filled with so many holes and inaccuracies that this new mandate will create absolute bedlam," said Charles "Shai" Goldstein, executive director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, based in Newark. "The system is a mess."
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Even if the data were clean and the search mechanism worked flawlessly, he said, there is still the potential for abuse by employers who may pre-screen employees to eliminate prospective workers from consideration without giving them the required opportunity to challenge the data.
Supporters of E-Verify scoff at complaints that it doesn't work and encourage all employers, whether they do business with the federal government or not, to use it. Arizona requires all employers to use it, and other states have enacted limited mandates.
"The system works," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said last week in explaining the decision to make it mandatory for federal contractors. "Of those workers who are legal, 99.5 percent of them roughly are verified essentially instantaneously. And those workers who have a mismatch . . . are able generally to resolve their issue within less than two days."
As a voluntary program, only about 70,000 of the nation's estimated 7.4 million employers used the system. Nationwide there are an estimated 200,000 government contractors who were paid nearly $415 billion in 2006, according to FedSpending.org, a project of the independent watchdog group OMB Watch. That same year, $7.6 billion in federal spending went to 3,655 contractors from New Jersey, which ranked 13th nationally.
In 2006, employers ran nearly 2 million employment eligibility verification queries using E-Verify. The top industry users were food services and drinking places, administrative and support services, professional and technical services, other information services and clothing and accessories stores.
CONFLICTING VIEWS
To sign up to use the E-Verify system, employers must provide their tax numbers and other information and agree to a series of restrictions, including that they won't pre-screen applicants and must give those who are flagged an opportunity to contest the results.
Once they are authorized to use the system, employers simply enter worker identification data and Social Security numbers to check 425 million records in the SSA's database and more than 60 million records in DHS immigration databases. The process is free and takes between three and five seconds.
Glenda Wooten-Ingram, director of human resources for the Embassy Suites Convention Center in Washington, told a congressional subcommittee last week that her company makes it known to perspective employees that they will be checked using E-Verify and that may discourage undocumented immigrants from applying.
"I firmly believe that this helped us to eliminate hiring applicants who did not have the legal paperwork required to work for the hotel," she said.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who wrote the law that created E-Verify, now wants to make it mandatory nationwide. He told Congress last week that, while it has its flaws, the system is performing well overall. He pointed to a study by the Washington-based research group Westat that showed the vast majority of the 5.8 percent of employees who do not receive instant verification of their employment status do not contest the results.
"Why do they walk away? Because E-Verify is denying jobs to illegal workers," he said.
Carolyn Shettle, senior study director at Westat, said the study found "substantial employer noncompliance" among E-Verify users.
The Westat study found 16 percent of users acknowledged prescreening applicants, 9 percent failed to notify employees of tentative nonconfirmation results, between 16 and 22 percent took punitive actions against employees based on preliminary negative results, and 7 percent discouraged employees from contesting E-Verify findings.
Shettle said the report also found new users were more likely to misuse the system, raising the possibility that misuse could rise as more employers join the program.
Maria Juega, a trustee and co-founder of the Princeton-based Latin American Legal Defense Fund, said an electronic system for verifying work eligibility is a worthy goal, but is useless without an immigration policy that includes more work visas and other means to make it easier for foreign nationals to work in the U.S.
"We're not addressing the fact that employers are hiring these workers because they need them," she said.
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