More employers verifying immigration status
By Doug Abrahms • Gannett News Service • April 5, 2008

WASHINGTON -- A growing number of U.S. employers are screening new hires through a federal government database to weed out illegal workers, even without Rep. Heath Shuler's bill that would make the practice mandatory.

Employers have screened about 2.5 million new hires in the first six months of fiscal 2008 through E-Verify, the Department of Homeland Security's database that determines which employees can legally work in the U.S. This compares to 3.3 million in fiscal 2007 and 1.7 million in fiscal 2006, according to the department.

The immigration bill by Shuler, D-Waynesville, N.C., would mandate that all U.S. employers use E-Verify to try to deter illegal immigration. A discharge petition to force a vote on the House floor on Shuler's measure has 185 signatures -- 33 shy of the number needed to force a vote -- but the effort seems to have stalled.

About a dozen states already require some or all employers to use E-Verify, including North Carolina, which mandates that state agencies utilize the database. The Homeland Security Department also announced last year stepping up enforcement against employers that knowingly hire large numbers of illegal workers.

E-Verify matches workers' names with Social Security numbers and uses other information from the Homeland Security Department to determine work eligibility. But some critics say errors in the government's database could cause millions of legitimate workers to be rejected.

An inspector general report in 2006 found 17.8 million errors in the Social Security Administration's name and number records, said Jennifer Chang, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants' Rights Project. That could throw millions of workers from their jobs, she said.

The ACLU filed suit to block Arizona from implementing its E-Verify law, but the court sided with the state.

The group also sued to stop the Homeland Security Department from targeting employers who receive Social Security Administration letters notifying them that they have more than 10 workers with incorrect Social Security numbers. A federal judge in San Francisco blocked Homeland Security's effort in October saying the rules could harm both workers and employers.

"The ACLU does believe that the government needs to first focus on fixing those errors and cleaning up the problems on the database before making American workers suffer the consequences," Chang said.

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