Fact of the Week: 3/6/08

Thursday, March 6, 2008

It’s Time for Congress to Create an Employment Verification System That Works

 

Fact Check

 

The New Employee Verification Act offers an innovative and effective approach to ensuring a legal workforce in the United States.

Did you know that New Employee Verification Act” (NEVA - H.R. 5515) provides a national employment verification system to help keep illegal workers off the payrolls?

  • NEVA will replace the failed paper-based I-9 screening process with a fully electronic and secure verification system.
  • NEVA will utilize the existing “New Hire” reporting system already used successfully by 90 percent of U.S. employers.  The database was established a dozen years ago to track “dead beat dads.”
  • NEVA offers an alternative to E-Verify, the current federal pilot employment verification system used by less than one percent of U.S. employers.
  • NEVA requires citizens’ personal and new job information to be checked only by the Social Security Administration, an agency that already maintains this information for all workers.  Only non-citizens would be verified through data maintained by the Department of Homeland Security.  

 

The New Employee Verification Act will mandate a national employment verification system that is reliable, efficient and secure.

 
With E-Verify Set to Expire in 2008, Now is the Time for the Next Generation of Employment Verification.

 

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The Human Resource Initiative for a Legal Workforce (www.legal-workforce.org) represents human resource professionals in thousands of small and large U.S. employers representing every sector of the American economy.  The HR Initiative and its members are seeking to improve the current process of employment verification by creating a secure, efficient and reliable system that will ensure a legal workforce and help prevent unauthorized employment, a root cause of illegal immigration.