Mandatory identity checks on American workforce sparks debate

Members of the House of Representatives expressed concerns on June 10 that a proposed employment-eligibility verification program designed to combat illegal immigration could have unintended consequences for lawful workers. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law convened to weigh expanding the federal employment-eligibility verification program, E-verify. The program links employers to the Department of Homeland Security, which verifies the identity of employees by pairing names with social-security numbers. The hearing came in the wake of an Executive Order issued the day before by President Bush, which bypassed congress by mandating the verification of legal working status for all United States federal contractors and subcontractors. Under the Bush order, all new hires by federal contractors would have their immigration status verified, as well as existing company employees at the start of a new federal contract. The US Department of Homeland Security supported the move by designating E-verify, a program that was previously voluntary, as the "system of choice" to prove work-eligibility status. "E-Verify is the best available tool for employers to gain quick and easy verification information for their new hires," said Jonathan Scharfen, acting director of US Citizenship and Immigration Services, testifying on June 10 before the House subcommittee. Congress is considering several bills to address immigration reform, including the Secure America with Verification and Enforcement Act or "SAVE Act" (H.R. 4088), introduced by Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) and Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-CO). That proposed legislation would mandate the use of E-verify for all new job hiring in the US within four years. Under the SAVE Act, an employee whose name and social-security number do not match Homeland Security records must correct the "no-match" error within 10 days -- or be terminated. The E-verify program was met with skepticism by some subcommittee members. One member cited an independent study commissioned by Homeland Security spotlighting flaws in the program that have left lawful workers wrongfully terminated. Opponents of E-verify testifying before the subcommittee painted a picture of an inaccurate system that could potentially disqualify millions of citizens and legal immigrants from work. "Errors in any mandatory employment verification system are inevitable, and when they arise, innocent American workers will be denied the right to work and earn an income -- effectively creating a 'No-Work' list and wreaking havoc on our economic vitality," said Timothy Sparapani, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "During the period these unfortunate workers are wrongly denied employment, they will be unable to work lawfully, which will surely cause them severe economic distress," Sparapani testified. "We thus urge Congress to refuse to mandate a system that will create a new 'No-Work List' that causes problems similar to the infamous No-Fly List -- to be populated by thousands of Americans who are wrongly blocked from working by their own government." Sparapani also raised concerns that mandated employment verification would lead to a spike in identity theft, as work-eligible identities would be in higher demand on the black market. "Between October 2006 and March 2007, roughly 3,000 foreign-born US citizens (in Arizona) were initially flagged as not-work-authorized," noted Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), speaking before the subcommittee. "These errors have specifically impacted Arizona workers who have had their ability to work wrongly impacted." Giffords supports an alternative bill to the SAVE Act, which would take the E-verify program out of the Department of Homeland Security and transfer oversight to the Department of Social Security -- whose database is believed to be more accurate. The state of Arizona saw more than 350,000 immigration arrests last year. Thousands occurred in Giffords' home district, which includes Tucson, a city that borders Mexico. Despite the state's illegal immigration troubles, the current E-verify system has proved inaccurate, burdensome, and unreliable, Giffords charged. Arizona leads the nation in E-verify use, and requires use of the E-verify system for all hiring in the state -- the first in the nation to do so. A report on E-verify released in April by the National Immigration Law Center supports Giffords' concerns about the program's shortcomings. "Due to database errors, foreign-born lawful workers are 30 times more likely than native born US citizens to be incorrectly identified as not authorized for employment," the report found. The report also noted that one in 10 foreign-born workers legally eligible for work in the United States are erroneously flagged as ineligible by the E-verify system. In comparison, one in 1,000 native-born US citizens are inaccurately represented in the system. Married women comprised the bulk of native-born citizens receiving "no-match" returns. While Bush's recently issued Executive Order mandating E-verify for federal contractors will affect potentially millions of workers across the US, it will take congressional legislation to make the system mandatory for all US employers. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that adopting the SAVE Act would cost American taxpayers more than $40 billion over the course of 10 years. There are believed to be over 14 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. Shawn Gaynor is a freelance journalist and former editor of the Asheville Global Report.