SHRM Recommends Stronger Employment Verification System

Washington, D.C. --  In testimony today before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security, Susan R. Meisinger, President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) urged Congress to strengthen and improve employment verification measures in the comprehensive immigration reform legislation now under consideration.  SHRM is a founding member of the Human Resource Initiative for a Legal Workforce (HR Initiative).

"Effective employment verification is the lynchpin of true immigration reform," stated Meisinger.  "Unfortunately, the present federal system is inadequate in several ways, and current proposals before Congress fall far short of what is needed."

Meisinger criticized calls for mandating employer use of the decade-old "Basic Pilot" federal employment verification program currently used voluntarily by only 16,000 employers.  According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), if all 6 million U.S. employers were required to enroll in the Basic Pilot within 18 months, as called for by some proposals in Congress, USCIS would need to enroll approximately 20,000 employers per day to meet that target.

"Expanding Basic Pilot to cover all employers is unworkable.  The result will be confusion and uncertainty for employers and employees, denied employment opportunities, and significant employer penalties," Meisinger said.  

Since Basic Pilot relies on paper documents, it is also extremely vulnerable to fraud and identity theft.  The Basic Pilot system does not verify the authenticity of the identity being presented for employment purposes, only that the identity presented matches information in government databases managed by the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security.

"Employers need the right tools to verify a legal workforce.  However, HR cannot -- and should not -- be America's surrogate border patrol agents," Meisinger continued.  "Congress must scrap the current paper-based process for a state-of-the-art electronic system that is accurate, reliable, cost-efficient, and easy-to-use."

SHRM and the HR Initiative are advocating a new electronic employment verification system that would verify identity through the use of state-of-the-art technology, additional background checks and the voluntary use of biometric enrollment conducted by government certified private vendors.

Click here to download the full text of Susan Meisinger's testimony.