Thread: Hearing Deals with Expansion of Employee Verification System

Hearing Deals Blow to Expansion of Employee Verification System
Lawmakers say broadening E-Verify would strain the Social Security Administration as the agency tries to reduce a huge backlog of disability claims.
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http://www.workforce.com/section/00/art ... 51/67.html

May 6, 2008
Hearing Deals Blow to Expansion of Employee Verification System
An effort to expand a federal electronic employment verification system was set back at a House hearing on Tuesday, May 6, as lawmakers voiced concerns that the mechanism would overburden the Social Security Administration.

In the first of a series of immigration hearings this spring, the House Ways & Means subcommittee on Social Security explored proposals to crack down on illegal hiring through electronic worker verification.

One idea is to extend the current government electronic system, called E-Verify, to each of the country’s 7.4 million employers. Today, about 61,000 companies voluntarily use E-Verify, which checks information from I-9 forms against databases at the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

Rep. Michael McNulty, D-New York and chairman of the subcommittee, cautioned that the Social Security Administration must not take on added immigration responsibilities while the agency is trying to reduce a huge backlog of disability claims. Constituent queries regarding the payments can take more than 500 days to answer.

“It would be very difficult to get a majority to vote for a nationalization of the E-Verify system at this point in time,â€

Hearing on E-Verify, SAVE Act
By Eunice Moscoso | Tuesday, May 6, 2008, 10:09 PM

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/ ... e_act.html

Forcing companies to use a government system to verify the legal status of workers would cause thousands of citizens and legal residents to be initially rejected for work and cripple the Social Security Administration, critics told Congress Tuesday.

The system, known as E-Verify, is currently voluntary, but several proposals in Congress — including an immigration enforcement measure known as the SAVE Act — would make it mandatory.

John Trasvina, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that the E-Verify system relies on faulty Social Security Administration (SSA) and Department of Homeland Security databases and would therefore create an official “no-workâ€

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ne ... 035598.php

WASHINGTON
With the clock ticking on the life of a voluntary online system that helps employers make sure they are hiring legal workers, a House panel today heard from lawmakers, business owners and experts on what to do next.

Few expect Congress to act this year on any comprehensive immigration proposal or on the enforcement-only measures that have been introduced on Capitol Hill. But unless lawmakers do something, the current E-Verify workplace verification system will expire in November.

Rep. Ken Calvert, who authored the first program to check on the legal status of workers, the Basic Pilot Program, told the House subcommittee on Social Security that the current program should be made mandatory.

"There is no perfect system,'' said Calvert, R-Corona, reacting to those who say the four percent error rate is unacceptable and has lead to workers who should have been hired losing job opportunities. "We should remember not to make the perfect the enemy of the good."

But after he testified before his colleagues, Calvert said that he doesn't expect any significant immigration bill to pass this year. What is likely, he said, is that Congress will pass a temporary extension of the current system.


Today's hearing before a Ways and Means subcommittee and another session before the Education and Labor Committee are viewed by immigration-watchers as part of an effort by Democratic leaders to show they are taking steps to address immigration. More hearings are expected before the Memorial Day recess on different aspects of the immigration issue.

"Legislating in an election year, especially on immigration-related matters, is more like Kabuki theater than serious policy deliberation,'' said Doug Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant group. Rivlin's group still welcomes the hearings.

The Social Security panel heard from witnesses who were especially concerned that any effort to expand E-Verify from a voluntary program now used by about 63,000 employers to one where all six million U.S. businesses would be included would strain the Social Security Administration beyond its limits.

"Verification does not belong in Social Security,' said former Rep. Barbara Kennelly, now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Kennelly and other Social Security experts pointed to the 750,000-case backlog in the processing of disability claims as evidence that the agency could not handle the workload involved in such a mandate.

Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., made it clear that he would oppose any measure that impacted that backlog. And he came armed with data showing how long disability applicants have to wait in the congressional districts of those colleagues seeking an expansion of the E-Verify program.

In Calvert's 44th District, for example, which includes parts of south Orange County, someone filing a disability claim has to wait 408 days for it to be processed. The worst backlog in the country is in Atlanta where the wait time averages 849 days.

E-Verify has long been plagued with problems, mostly as a result of errors in the data bases the system relies on to match someone's Social Security number with their identity.

When an employer uses the system, a prospective employee's information is checked with Social Security if they are a U.S. citizen. If they are a green card holder their data is run through a Department of Homeland Security database. About 93 percent of numbers placed into the system immediately come back verified. The remaining need further adjudication by either DHS or SSA.

If the system were made nationwide and mandatory, the Social Security Administration would need at least 700 more people to handle the increased workload, Richard Stana, director of homeland security issues for the Government Accountability Office, told the committee. And hundreds more workers would be needed at DHS.

Mitchell Laird, an owner of Burger King restaurants in Phoenix, said Arizona's law requiring that all employers use E-Verify includes stiff penalties. Laird said such sanctions might lead employers to give hiring "preference to applicants who look like they…. are U.S. citizens.''

Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, the senior Republican on the subcommittee, has authored a bill that would use a combination of sources to check workers' eligibility, including using outside contractors to verify people's status. Johnson's bill requires that Congress pay for such as program upfront and also removes DHS from any part in worker verification.

Immigration worker verification
Should Congress require that all employers in the country use an online system to verify a person's eligibility to legally work in the United States?
Yes
76%

No
7%

Only if the government can guarantee the data base is accurate
18%


Total Votes: 88

Lets change the words for Congress to understand the problem. Lets tell them there are U.S. Citizens that are using false SS# because they are fugatives from the law. They work under the table to avoid paying child support or garnishment from owing IRS taxes. I bet they would OK it than.

I would think that if my number was rejected first I would be pissed but I guarentee I would find out why. I want all of the money I pay in to be accounted for. Let me guess the same people crying wolf now will be even more upset when they can not straighten out the wrong wage earnings at retirement time.

Plans for immigration ‘fixes’ show deep divisions in House
By Jared Allen
Posted: 05/06/08 06:53 PM [ET]

House lawmakers heard competing proposals designed to ferret out the number of illegal workers in the labor market in a year when even modest attempts at immigration reform appear to be a difficult task.


One year after a broad attempt to address the more than 12 million illegal immigrants crumbled, a movement is afoot to prod businesses to verify the legal status of employees. Yet bipartisan factions in the House are split on the way to do this.



At issue is whether to pass legislation that requires businesses to check Social Security numbers for all workers against a federal database, or simply mandate that new hires meet this standard.


The discrepancy between competing workplace verification proposals was on full display Tuesday, as a House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee heard two ideas for changing the role of the nation’s electronic verification system, also known as E-Verify.


Currently, employers are not obligated to use it, but can voluntarily check their workers’ status with the federal government. Employers are required by law to check identification at the workplace, but often times these documents are fraudulent.


A bill by Rep. Health Shuler (D-N.C.) would mandate that the E-Verify pilot program currently in use by some 61,000 employers be uniformly adopted by the estimated 7.4 million employers across the country.


A nationwide E-Verify mandate would result in approximately 63 million new employment queries a year, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO).


And while Shuler and Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who is also pushing for nationwide E-Verify, admit that the system isn’t perfect, they both say it’s the best system in place to ensure that employers are hiring only legal workers.


But already a competing and wholly different employment verification proposal is emerging from another bipartisan group in the House.


Social Security Subcommittee ranking member Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) have introduced legislation to require only newly hired employees to be subject to verification. They called their bill superior to Shuler’s proposal. Giffords said that Arizona’s experience using E-Verify has been less than stellar.


Many businesses in her state are finding E-Verify “complicated, unreliable and burdensome,â€