May 20, 2008 10:00 AM
With Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy looking at requiring 16,000 county employers to use e-verify, I thought it might be useful to take a close look at this program run by the Department of Homeland Security in a three-part series.
First, let me begin by saying what e-verify is not. It is not required by Federal law. The anti-immigrant leadership in Suffolk have typically cloaked their actions in the rhetoric of simply bringing local enforcement to bear on violators of Federal laws. e-verify does not fit within this rhetoric. It imposes a new requirement on county employers different from Federal requirements.
e-verify is a system which is still in its early stages of development that allows employers to verify work authorization for employees. Employers submit information about an employee through the internet and they receive notice back of employment eligibility. Participation in this program is purely voluntary for almost all employers. Hence, Levy's proposal would not be a local application of Federal law, but instead a new unfunded mandate for Suffolk business.
The e-verify system has been widely criticized for its high number of inaccurate "false positives", discrimination against Latinos that has resulted from its use, as well as from concerns about privacy issues. I will take up all these issues in coming articles, as well as the way e-verify contributes to identity theft.
e-verify is just the latest effort to make employers the enforcers of America's immigration laws. Prior to 1986, employers were never considered part of the structure of immigration enforcement. In that year, employers were made the unpaid agents of the INS. The failure of employer sanctions to stem illegal immigration has led to calls to make the anti-business regime tougher. e-verify is the result.