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A tool to check new hires
Has data on work status

By Veronica Gonzalez
Staff Writer
veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com


The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services webpage the UNCW human Resources Department uses to check people who have been offered and have accepted a job have a legitiment Social Security card that has been issued to them. If a problem is discovered the employee is asked to go to the Social Security Administration within 8 days to clear up the matter. Staff Photo By JEFFREY S. OTTO / WILMINGTON STAR NEWS

At Southport Boat Works, 50 people might apply for roughly 10 openings this month at the Leland-based fiberglass, sport-fishing boat manufacturer.

Some of those applicants will never be hired for jobs that pay an average of $13 an hour - but not because of poor qualifications.

Rather, it will be because they're undocumented, said Mary Wilson, the company's human resources manager.

"I have turned away a lot of experienced candidates," she said of undocumented workers who have applied for jobs.

For more than a year, the company has been using the federal, Internet-based Basic Pilot Employment Verification program to ensure it doesn't hire undocumented workers.

Now the state is following suit.

Starting Jan. 1, the state mandated all new hires be checked using the program.

That affects employers such as the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Cape Fear Community College as well as other state agencies.

The program is used to check a new hire's Social Security or resident alien number in a database to make sure he is eligible to work in this country.

Congress created the program in 1996. The Department of Homeland Security administers the program, which was expanded to all 50 states in 2004.

New hires typically are asked to fill out an I-9 form on which they write their name and Social Security number or alien resident number, which the employer verifies.

Information from the I-9 is checked to determine whether the number provided to the employer matches the one in the federal database.

"This really is just one more effort to make sure who we hire here is in fact legally eligible to work in the United States," said James DiStefano, immigration law specialist at the N.C. Office of State Personnel.

The requirement for state employers to use the Basic Pilot program was included in state Senate Bill 1523, the technical corrections act meant to fix general laws. It was signed into law in August.

The state, which employs 93,608 workers, hires between 1,500 and 2,000 people a month, said Margaret Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Office of State Personnel. The figure includes full, part-time and temporary workers in the university system and agencies such as the N.C. Department of Transportation or Department of Labor.

DiStefano said he knew of fewer than five people so far who had been referred to Social Security since the state had started using the program.

"If they got married a year ago and never went to Social Security to change their last name, that would be a reason a hit might occur," he said.

The law does not apply to people hired before Jan. 1, contractors or subcontractors, according to the bill. And local school systems will have to implement the Basic Pilot program by March 1 of this year.

"North Carolina is kind of cutting edge with the use of the Basic program," DiStefano said. "We are one of the few states that are doing this."

How it works

Within three days of a person's hiring, employers take the information from the I-9 form such as a new employee's name, birth date and Social Security number and type it into the Basic Pilot online system.

Within minutes, a report comes back saying whether the number matches one in the system. If it doesn't match, it says the number is invalid and the employee has to report to the Social Security Administration to find out why.

Even if it turns out the person was not allowed to work in this country, the person is not arrested or turned over to law enforcement. He is simply relieved of his duties.

The program, which is free to any employer, is funded by the federal government. In 2006, its budget was $3 million and another $110 million was included in this year's budget to expand it, said Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

"It's strictly for the employer to make the best possible decision when going through the hiring process," he said.

At UNCW, Kris Rausch, an applicant credentials assistant who works in human resources conducting background checks, said she's checked about 25 new employees so far.

But it can be done only after they're hired.

"It cannot be used as a selection tool," she said.

At the university, 122 people were trained to use the system.

"We're presuming it's going to go smoothly," said William Fleming, human resources director. "It's affecting a lot of people."

John Upton, personnel director for CFCC, said the college hires up to 100 full-time people a year and as many as 500 part-timers.

He said the college has checked about six new hires so far with no problem.

"This is just taking that process one step further," he said.

Program's popularity

Across the country, about 13,000 employers are using the Basic Pilot program, and in North Carolina, 564 employers are using it, Bentley said.

In Wilmington, at least two private employers have been using the program. At Southport Boat Works in Leland, the program has become an objective tool to use when hiring a diverse group of employees, Wilson said.

"It has saved us from hiring an employee that does not have valid work status," she said. "That happened on more than one occasion."

She did not specify how many employees were relieved of their duties once it was discovered that they didn't qualify.

In an e-mail, she wrote that the program "removes the guesswork when identifying legitimate documents for the I-9."

Before using the program, "you basically had to eyeball two documents and decide if they're legitimate or not," she said, adding the company is pleased with the results.

A downfall of the program is that it doesn't catch when someone is using another person's Social Security number, and one company ran into trouble because of that.

Swift & Co., a Greeley, Colo.- based beef and pork producer, found that 1,282 workers who did not have permission to work in this country were given employment because they were using other U.S. citizens' Social Security numbers, according to the Charlotte Observer.

Bentley said the program isn't advanced enough to detect that type of fraud.

"Employers can see very simple types of fraud that people try to engage in to try to get work," Bentley said. "It's not designed to combat sophisticated schemes involving identity theft."

Veronica Gonzalez: 343-2008

veronica.gonzalez@starnewsonline.com