June 9, 2008 3:28 PM
We will be at the Suffolk county Legislature tomorrow at 9am to speak out against Jon Coopers bill IR1479, which would create an 18-month pilot program to mandate any contractor with a county contract to verify their workers' legal status using the federal e-verify system.
I am including the letter we sent to all the Legislators incase any of you were looking for more information on the flaws of e-verify.
June 9, 2008
Dear Legislator:
Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 10th, IR1479 "Establishing an E-Verify Pilot Program in the Department of Public Works" introduced by Legislator Jon Cooper is scheduled for a vote in the Legislature.
The electronic employee verification system, or e-verify system, has been extremely controversial and has been found by the United States Government Accountability Office and other organizations to be very faulted and deficient.
The e-verify system has been found to be insufficient, especially in the cases of married women and naturalized citizens. Due to the programs errors, American citizens have been unjustly prevented from being hired for positions.
Many groups including government agencies and organizations have researched this topic extensively and below is the compiled information for your review before tomorrow's meeting. This document contains testimony and reports of the crippling and unfair mistakes contained within the e-verify system.
Long Island WINS believes the residents of Suffolk County deserve equal employment opportunities. Any use of the e-verify system would hinder that right. We ask that you as a Legislator make decisions that are fair and equal for all your constituents and vote no on IR1479.
Sincerely,
The Long Island WINS Team
www.longislandwins.com
Information on the Flaws of the Federal E-Verify System
June 9, 2008
United States Government Accountability Office
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08729t.pdf
"Requiring employers to electronically check employees' eligibility to work in the United States would require more than $1 billion to expand and maintain a verification system over the next four years."
Prepared by Westat for the US Department of Homeland Security:
http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/WebBasicPilotRprtSept2007.pdf
"Most importantly, the database used for verification is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the [Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996] requirement for accurate verification, especially for naturalized citizens."
Office of the Inspector General, Social Security Administration
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/audittxt/A-08-06-26100.htm
"We identified some discrepancies that could result in the Basic Pilot providing incorrect feedback to employers attempting to determine the employment eligibility of their workers. Specifically, of the 2,430 Numident records reviewed, 136 contained discrepancies in the name, date of birth or citizenship status of the numberholder or we determined that the numberholder may be deceased. In all of these cases, the Basic Pilot provided incorrect results. As a result, we estimate that discrepancies in approximately 17.8 million (4.1 percent) of the 435 million Numident records could result in incorrect feedback when submitted through the Basic Pilot. While the accuracy of SSA's Numident records is noteworthy, if use of an employment verification service such as the Basic Pilot becomes mandatory, the workload of SSA and DHS may significantly increase—even if only a portion of these 17.8 million numberholders need to correct their records with one of these agencies."
Testimony of Richard E. Warsinskey, President, National Council of Social Security Management Associations to the United States Senate Committee on Finance
http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2007test/052307testrw.pdf
"The most extensive proposals being considered could require a doubling of the budget and
staff of SSA. If such legislation is passed and does not include the necessary funding for these
increased workloads it could cripple SSA's service capabilities and negate any progress that we
are working to achieve in addressing the disability backlogs."
Cato Institute:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-612.pdf
"A mandatory national EEV system would have substantial costs yet still fail to prevent illegal
immigration. It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work. By increasing the value of committing identity fraud, EEV would cause that crime's rates to rise."
Immigration Policy Center:
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/images/File/factcheck/AZE-verify04-08.pdf
"Some have claimed that E-Verify is working well in Arizona—that employers are signing up for the program and not experiencing any problems with the system. However, multiple reports point to the opposite conclusion. E-Verify is not yet fully implemented in Arizona and already there are significant signs of trouble. Before other state and federal lawmakers jump on the bandwagon and blithely seek expansion of E-Verify, they should heed the warning signs that the program is not ready for roll-out."
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/images/File/factcheck/EEVSbythenumbers04-08.pdf
"If the government database isn't accurate, Americans will be denied employment and paychecks, at least temporarily, while they attempt to resolve the problem with the government agencies."
(This link also gives great national figured which you might find helpful)
Drum Major Institute for Public Policy
http://drummajorinstitute.org/library/article.php?ID=6638
"It's a problem because those immigrants who have done everything right under our current system and who have finally become naturalized American citizens are the most likely to be unfairly penalized by EEVS. Employers feed their information into the system and 11 percent of the time, according to the latest evaluation, the answer they get it that this person, this U.S. citizen, is someone without proper documentation who's not authorized to work. That's an error rate of more than one in 10 when it comes to foreign-born U.S. citizens."
National Immigration Law Center
http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/state_local/AZ_factsheet_2008--04-25.pdf
"The database errors have the greatest impact on naturalized U.S. citizens, with almost 10 percent initially being told that they are not authorized to work. According to the Census Bureau, there are at least 273,700 naturalized citizens in Arizona, which means potentially 27,370 of those U.S. citizens will be initially flagged as not authorized to work. Many Arizona workers may find that they are unable to correct their records within the mandatory time frame."
Against E-Verify
By Frederick Squires June 9, 2008 06:40 PM
For 2008 to date, 19,000 "Tentative NonConfirmations" have been returned out of over four million submissions to E-Verify. Of those, a certain number are data entry errors that are immediately corrected. Many are truly ineligible to work. The remainder (and remember, we're talking about less than one-half of one percent of total submissions receive a Tentative NonConfirmation response) include married women and naturalized citizens.
Your conclusion that "[t]he e-verify system has been found to be insufficient..." in these cases is incorrect. E-Verify CORRECTLY reports that the employee, as entered into the system, is not eligible to work. The law puts the responsibility on the employee to update his/her SSA record in the event of marriage or naturalization. A Tentative NonConfirmation results in these cases not from E-Verify's failure, but the failure of the employee!
Finally, you are absolutely wrong to assert that, because of E-Verify, "...American citizens have been unjustly prevented from being hired for positions."
An individual's I-9 info can only be submitted to E-Verify after they have been hired. Used correctly, E-Verify can NEVER prevent an American citizen [or anyone else] from being hired.
By Bob G June 15, 2008 02:09 AM
Bob, I notice you cite no sources for your numbers while we have. Care to share?
Your right the system is to be used for new hires after they have been hired...if it's used correctly. And how many employers will simply not hire someone with a "foreign-sounding" name or a woman who has a hyphenated name because it's easier than dealing with the system?
By Lisa Votino-Tarrant June 16, 2008 09:32 AM