Report finds E-verify misses half of illegal workers

[Ulrich]

The Associated Press reports that E-Verify, an electronic verification system used to verify that new employees are authorized to work in the U.S. fails to catch more than half of the undocumented workers it checks.

Here is more of the story from the AP:

The online tool E-Verify, now used voluntarily by employers, wrongly clears illegal workers about 54 percent of the time, according to Westat, a research company that evaluated the system for the Homeland Security Department. E-Verify missed so many illegal workers mainly because it can't detect identity fraud, Westat said.

"Clearly it means it's not doing it's No. 1 job well enough," said Mark Rosenblum, a researcher at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan, Washington think tank.

E-Verify allows employers to run a worker's information against Homeland Security and Social Security databases to check whether they are permitted to work in the U.S. The Obama administration has made cracking down on employers who hire people here illegally a central part of its immigration enforcement policy, and there are expectations that some Republicans in Congress will try in coming weeks to make E-Verify mandatory.

E-Verify correctly identified legal workers 93 percent of the time, Westat said. However, previous studies have not quantified how many immigrants were fooling the E-Verify system. Much of the criticism of E-Verify has focused on whether U.S. citizens and legal immigrants with permission to work were falsely flagged as illegal workers.

Here is the government's response to the report, which does not refute the 54 percent figure.

Homeland Security officials wrote this in the response in defense of the 54 percent statistic: "E-Verify accurately detects the status of unauthorized workers almost half of the time. While not perfect, it is important to note that E-Verify is much more effective than the Form I-9 verification process used by employers not using the program."

Final E-Verify Report 12-16-09_2

 

[Ulrich]

A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers led by Arizona Democrat Gabrielle Giffords is pushing for a new federal system to verify who is legally allowed to work in this country.

The proposed system promises to do a better job of preventing illegal immigrants from getting jobs than the current online system, known as E-Verify. A recent report found flaws in the existing system.

First introduced two years ago by Reps. Giffords and Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican, the proposed system is only now gaining attention following the publication of the government-commissioned report, which estimated that more than half of the illegal immigrants run through the E-Verify system are wrongly being deemed authorized to work because they use stolen identities.

Giffords' proposal, known as the New Employee Verification Act, or NEVA, would require employers to run new hires through more federal databases and encourage background checks. Her plan is supported by 10 U.S. lawmakers - three Democrats and seven Republicans. It also has the backing of numerous business groups.

But some analysts question whether the system proposed by Giffords would actually be more reliable than E-Verify at preventing illegal workers using stolen identities from getting jobs. The system also raises privacy concerns because it calls for employers to conduct background checks and collect biometric information on new employees that could be deemed too intrusive.

New way pushed to verify workers' legal status