May 15, 2008 6:12 AM
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy announced the next step in his campaign against Long Island's immigrant community. He wants to introduce legislation requiring all licensed contractors to participate in the Federal e-verify system. This would mandate that before a worker can be hired, an employer must first file an electronic submission of information about the worker to the Federal government over the internet.
Supporters of the recently passed IR-1105 said they backed the bill merely to bring local enforcement to bear on what is already Federal law. Adoption of e-verify would, instead, create a local mandate where no Federal requirement exists. Employers are not required by Federal law to use e-verify and they never have been.
e-verify will add create an unfunded mandate for employers, increasing the burden on them to enforce the immigration laws without paying them ICE salaries. It will delay hirings. Most importantly, the poorly maintained Federal database has been shown to be inaccurate with a high error-rate in both the data and in human usage.