HR Expert Group Calls for Stronger Employment Verification Provisions in Senate Immigration Bill

Washington, D.C. -- Following an initial review of the draft Senate immigration reform proposal announced today, the Human Resource Initiative for a Legal Workforce (HR Initiative) called on the Senate to improve the employment verification measures included in Title III of the bill.

"Effective, state-of-the-art employment verification is the most essential part of any immigration reform.  Unfortunately, we don't believe this bill takes the right approach," said Susan R. Meisinger, President and CEO, Society for Human Resource Management.  "We appreciate the monumental effort undertaken by the bipartisan group of Senate negotiators, but at the end of the day, without reliable and secure employment verification, we cannot hope to ensure a legal workforce."

The HR Initiative advocates a secure electronic employment verification system that would verify identity through the use of state-of-the-art technology, additional background checks and the potential use of biometric enrollment conducted by government certified private vendors.

In the absence of these provisions, the HR Initiative outlined the following serious problems in the current proposal:

• Mandating an Inaccurate System -- A debacle will result if final legislation mandates all U.S. employers to use the current electronic system, the Basic Pilot, without first ensuring accuracy of the government databases upon which it relies. 

• Encouraging Identity Theft -- Creating a reliable mandatory electronic employment verification system is a step in the right direction. However, it will not detect cases of identity theft, encouraging unauthorized workers to engage in identity theft to get jobs.

• Imposing Unworkable Re-verification -- The Senate proposal would require all employers to re-verify the identity and employment eligibility of all employees. Over 149 million Americans are currently employed. If all employers must re-verify every existing worker, the burden on the government and the private sector will cause the new system to collapse.  

• Unfairly Assigning Liability -- The Senate proposal would create liability for an employer for the actions of subcontractors or contractors even if the firm using the contract labor or service lacks actual knowledge or control of the contractor's employment practices.

"As human resource experts, and representatives of employers on the front lines of this issue, we urge the Senate to include provisions for a secure, efficient and reliable employment verification system in final immigration reform legislation," concluded Meisinger.