Critics Bash Federal Employee Verification System

WASHINGTON — Forcing U.S. companies to use a government system to verify the legal status of employees would result in hundreds of thousands of citizens and legal residents being initially rejected for work, critics said Tuesday.

Immigrant advocates, business groups and experts said that the system, known as E-Verify, relies on faulty databases that were never designed as immigration enforcement tools.

Lawmakers in Congress and at state houses across the country are considering proposals to make E-Verify mandatory in an effort to stop illegal immigration. The program — previously known as Basic Pilot — is currently voluntary in most states.

"What they're really putting at risk is all U.S. citizens," said Angela Kelley, director of the Immigration Policy Center, in a conference call with reporters. "If these bills pass, for the first time we are going to find ourselves as a nation, all workers, asking permission of our government to work, to be able to hold a job."

In Arizona, a law implemented in January requires all companies to run new employees through E-Verify. Under the law, companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants are subject to various penalties, including losing their business licenses. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have challenged the law, saying it is unconstitutional and interferes with federal immigration statutes.

Using the Internet-based system, an employer can check immediately whether employees are in the United States legally by comparing their information to electronic government records.

If the information doesn't match, the employee has an opportunity to correct the paperwork, often through a trip to the Social Security office. If the person can't correct the discrepancy, the employer must fire the worker.

Currently, more than 58,000 companies nationwide use the system and 1,000 are joining every week, federal officials said.

William Wright, a spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services, said that 92 percent of all queries are approved in less than five seconds. Of the remaining 8 percent, the vast majority are not contested, he said.

Wright said that employees are given a "due process for correcting data mismatches" and that there are many reasons why a person's information would not match, such as a change in name or citizenship status.

Emilio Gonzalez, director of the agency, told Congress earlier this month that charges that the system is not sufficiently accurate and places hardships on workers are "not true."

"Less than 1 percent of new hires actually contest a mismatch," he said. "Most mismatches that are not pursued involve the E-Verify system doing exactly what it is supposed to do: detecting and deterring unauthorized employment."

But even a small error rate could lead to major problems if the system is mandated nationwide, said Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington.

Harper, who sits on a committee that advises the Department of Homeland Security on privacy and data integrity issues, cited a 2006 report by the Social Security Administration's inspector general that said that the error rate of the agency's databases, which are used in the E-Verify system, is about 4 percent.

Nationwide, this would mean that 1 in 25 new hires would not receive an immediate legal match, or 11,000 people a day would have to get their papers fixed in order to work, Harper said. And many on the low end of the socio-economic process would not be able to navigate that process, he added.

"That's going to push law-abiding American workers out the bottom of the economic spectrum," he said.

A study last year by a private firm contracted by Homeland Security showed that naturalized citizens are far more likely than U.S.-born citizens to be found not eligible to work.

About 10 percent of foreign-born U.S. citizens receive a "mismatch," often because they have not updated their citizenship status with the Social Security Administration.

An immigration enforcement bill in the U.S. House, sponsored by Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., would mandate that all businesses use E-Verify within 4 years.

Supporters of the bill, including many Republicans who are tough on illegal immigration, are gathering signatures to move the measure directly to the House floor under a procedural maneuver. They need 218 signatures and have collected 181.

More than 50 proposals in state houses have also addressed the issue, said Tyler Moran, employment policy director at the National Immigration Law Center.

In Georgia, all public employers are required by law to use E-Verify. In addition, private companies contracted by the state must use it for new hires. The measures were part of an immigration law which went into effect last year.

Besides concerns about mismatches, critics said that an expansion of E-Verify would hurt small businesses that don't have the staff or technology to comply.

"Some small businesses would be forced to close their doors," said Jessica Johnson Bennett, government relations director at the Plumbing Heating Cooling Contractors Association.

On the Web:

U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services: www.uscis.gov/