fcw.com
Lawmakers ponder next step for E-Verify
By Ben Bain
Published on June 10, 2008

The House has begun to debate the effectiveness of the Homeland Security Department’s electronic employment eligibility verification system, E-Verify. Some lawmakers are considering making it mandatory for all employers while others are pushing for an alternate system.

Proponents say E-Verify allows employers to accurately confirm whether or not employees can legally work in the United States. However, critics say errors in the Social Security Administration database against which queries are checked could cause the system to wrongly reject employees.

Others contend that DHS should focus on national security and not on tracking the employment eligibility of American workers.

About 69,000 employers have voluntarily registered to use E-Verify to confirm that their employees can legally work in the United States. The program began in 1996 as a pilot effort, and several states have made the process mandatory.

“E-Verify is not perfect — no system is — but it is a very good system that has safeguards to ensure that employers’ and employees’ rights are being protected in accordance with the law,â€