The Key To Effective Immigration Reform - Fact of the Day

Identity theft is a significant and growing problem in the American work place.  When potential employees present false identity documents to employers, there is no legal, secure method available for validating authenticity.  Without a Secure Electronic Employment Verification System – which does not exist today, and is not included in current immigration reform legislation – unauthorized workers will continue to come to the United States to seek and obtain jobs.

Stopping Identity Theft:

• The current electronic verification system the “Basic Pilot” is severely limited by the proliferation of fraudulent identity documents. The Basic Pilot system cannot validate that the person presenting identity documents is who he or she claims to be.  Basic Pilot can only confirm that the identity presented matches information in Social Security and DHS databases. This glaring loophole actually encourages identity theft!

• Basic Pilot also places an unfair burden on employers to exercise discretion in examining up to 29 different legally acceptable identity documents.  Employers should not be expected to distinguish genuine immigration documents from nearly flawless fake documents – and inquiring “too far” can lead to the employer being charged with civil right violations.

• We can do better.  Instead of requiring all U.S. employers to use Basic Pilot – as current proposals would mandate – Congress should take steps towards enacting Secure Electronic Employment Verification System that relies on biometric or other state-of-the-art identification technology and can make false documents and identity theft ineffective.

Preventing Unauthorized Employment is the Key to Effective Immigration Reform

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.