Fact of the Week: 3/11/08

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

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

 

Fact Check

 

If all U.S. employers were to use E-Verify, millions of U.S. citizens and legal residents could potentially be denied employment due to the government’s bureaucratic errors.

Did you know there is a 4.1 percent error rate in the Social Security Administration database?

  • If all U.S. employers were to use E-Verify, as many as six million U.S. citizens and legal residents could be denied employment due to bureaucratic error.  The error rate for legal foreign-born workers is estimated to be as high as 10 percent – opening the door to increased discrimination based on national origin.
  • This error rate will impact the ability of legal workers to obtain jobs, subject employers to stiff penalties if they mistakenly hire an unauthorized worker, and expose employers to potential lawsuits if they deny employment to a legal worker – all because of faulty government data and processes.
  • This error rate will also push millions of people to Social Security field offices in order to correct errors. 
  • The “New Employee Verification Act (“NEVA” - H.R. 5515) anticipates this flood of visits and requires advance funding of field offices to meet this demand and avert problems similar to those in passport offices last summer.

 

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.