Thread: FL-Internet tool helps employers check workers' imm status

Internet tool helps employers check workers' immigration status
Enforcement crackdown spurs businesses to sign up for E-Verify
Victor Manuel Ramos, Orlando Sentinel

8:09 p.m. EDT, April 2, 2010


You might not realize it when you get a new job, but soon your name may be checked against a government database to answer the question: Are you an illegal immigrant?

Thousands of employers in Florida and tens of thousands nationwide have enrolled in a voluntary government program known as E-Verify, which allows them to find out whether their new hires are entitled to work in the U.S.

Hundreds of companies and institutions in Central Florida — ranging from Westgate Resorts and Dunkin Donuts shops to St. Cloud government and Orange County Public Schools — have joined the program.

They include businesses in the hospitality, restaurant and construction industries, where many undocumented immigrants have found employment.

Given the recent immigration debate and the push for enforcement, many contracts for construction work have even required immigration checks. Federal contracts require them.

"You [construction companies] have binding contracts where you state that all of your employees are legal to work in the United States," said Debbie Crowe, an office manager with All-Rite Fence Co. in west Orlando, which signed up for E-Verify. "This is another way to verify along with Social Security cards."

The electronic-verification system is one of the new fronts in the government's fight against illegal immigration. The use of such safeguards is expected to grow as the Obama administration shifts enforcement to work sites and as legislators prepare more immigration reform that could include more accountability requirements.

Immigration officials are encouraging more companies to join the program, and a few states have made status checks mandatory.

"Employers have everything to gain and nothing to lose using E-Verify. It's a smart, simple, free and effective online tool that helps businesses maintain a legal work force," said Sharon Scheidhauer, a spokeswoman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that administers the program. "E-Verify is growing and beginning to sell itself as employers discover how user-friendly and fast it is to verify employment eligibility."

More Florida companies are acting pre-emptively to comply with the law, before they find themselves under inspection by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. From 2008 to 2009, the number of Florida employers enrolled in E-Verify grew by 86 percent to 6,389 enrollees. Another 1,400 Florida employers have signed up since, according to figures from immigration services.

Nationally, the number of participants checking immigration records grew by 78 percent from 2008 to 2009 and continues on the upswing with more than 192,000 employers.

The government figures also show that those employers are using the immigration database more frequently. The level of queries, or searches for the status of workers, rose by 35 percent in Florida from 2008 to 2009. It grew by 31 percent nationally.

Florida businesses and institutions have checked more than 215,000 times this year to see whether their employees are illegal immigrants.

Héctor Chichoni, an immigration attorney in Miami, said many companies are joining the program because they want to avoid fines.

"There is a great deal of fear out there among the employers, because they can be penalized or even lose their businesses," Chichoni said. "People are signing up not because they think it's such a great program, but because they want to protect themselves from the government."

When a business enters a worker's data, it either gets confirmation that the person is authorized to work or it receives a "tentative non-confirmation" notice, which gives the employee eight days to prove his or her immigration status. If the employee cannot, he or she must be fired.

U.S. immigration officials said so far those cases have not been referred to law-enforcement agencies, but the system still acts as a deterrent for fraudulent identification.

U.S. Sens. Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham, who are working on reform legislation, hinted that a system such as E-Verify could become an immigration-enforcement standard. They wrote in an op-ed article for the Washington Post that their proposal would require "an effective employment verification system" and a tamperproof national identification for every person authorized to work.

Immigration advocates say they have concerns about the widespread use of E-Verify, because inaccuracies in the databases cause unnecessary hassles for workers and because they worry about employers misusing the system to prescreen job candidates. Under program rules, employers are to check every new hire, not just immigrants, after they offer them a job.

Despite the recent rise in participation, slightly more than 2 percent of all U.S. companies are enrolled in E-Verify.

"It still is a relatively tiny program, and making it mandatory for all employers would really be a big change, so that whatever problems are in the system now would be amplified," said Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst with the Immigration Policy Center, a pro-immigrant policy group in Washington. "If you lose your job because of a government error, then you need to establish clearly what is the procedure to fix the error and what is the compensation for losing work."

Several Orlando-area employers who signed up for E-Verify said they have not yet used the program, partly because they are not hiring new employees. But they want to be ready for stricter requirements.

"It's just one more step to ensure that we are complying with the law," said Allison Marcous, human resources director for Altamonte Springs, which expects to use E-Verify at the start of its fiscal year in October.

"Identity theft has everyone very concerned, and it's very hard to make a subjective determination when you hire someone whether a Social Security card or a passport is an original or something that has been tampered with. This helps."

VÃ*ctor Manuel Ramos can be reached at vramos@OrlandoSentinel.com




http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/loc ... 2900.story

I just wish the state would pass a bill making it mandatory. People get caught hiring ilegals and still continue to do so. I have reported ASI which does cleaning and maintenance in my condo complex and have seen some people and most are still ilegals. Infact they are doing jobs that should be done by licensed people like electrical and plumbing.