Thread: E-Verify system only loosely enforced in Minnesota

E-Verify system only loosely enforced in Minnesota

No state agency - not even the governor's office - is electronically verifying immigration status in hiring.

By JEAN HOPFENSPERGER, Star Tribune

Last update: June 11, 2009 - 1:39 PM

Eighteen months after Gov. Tim Pawlenty ordered state agencies and contractors to more aggressively verify workers' immigration status, a state audit has found that the governor's own office has yet to implement the program.

In fact, none of Minnesota's state agencies, which hired about 7,000 workers last year, has used the federal electronic identity-check system known as E-Verify, according to the office of the Legislative Auditor. The agencies hire workers ranging from janitors at the Capitol to health aides at nursing homes to highway work crews.

About 43 percent of the 1,400 private businesses required to use the electronic verification system are doing so, the audit said.

Another 16 percent have registered to use the system but haven't yet done so.

"It's a concern that 18 months after an executive order was signed, it's not being implemented'' said Deb Junod, the audit's evaluation manager. "The entire executive branch was directed to use E-Verify and it is not using it.''

The state Office of Management and Budget said it will launch the identity checks by the end of August. The state has been working with a vendor to create a centralized system for screening new hires and is ironing out security issues, said OMB Assistant Commissioner Judy Plante.

Responding to the audit, Pawlenty said he wants the state's bureaucrats to be more forceful in carrying out his order.

"We're not going to be able to go and look over their shoulder in every transaction and every instance, but we have to have enough mechanisms in place to be confident they are doing what they're supposed to do," Pawlenty said.

When Pawlenty ordered all businesses with annual state contracts of at least $50,000 to use E-Verify, it was considered Minnesota's first major effort to stop illegal immigration at its source -- the workplace. Pawlenty had announced about a dozen initiatives to curb illegal immigration during his tenure, but this was the most significant.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/sta ... cUiacyKUUr

Unbelievable. The system seems so easy to sign up for and use. I've seen it demonstrated by a USCIS representative and just went through the sign up steps to see how long it would take.

If there is a Law on the books that is not enforced is it really a Law?

Just wondering.