Since it appears we’re going to have a lame-duck Congressional session, it’s possible to clean up a little bit of unfinished business while they’re at it. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, the future of the E-Verify system is in doubt:
The E-Verify program, which allows employers to check the immigration status of new employees, has been steadily improving and is now 99.5 percent accurate, according to a new paper by the Center for Immigration Studies. This voluntary program is already screening more than one in ten new hires nationwide, and as of September 13, 2008, has processed 6.21 million queries.
E-Verify is set to expire on November 30, 2008, unless it is re-authorized by Congress. The House of Representatives has already passed a reauthorization bill by a vote of 407-2, while the Senate has not yet taken action.
To help inform debate over E-Verify, the Center for Immigration Studies has produced a thorough evaluation. The Backgrounder, entitled “If It’s Fixed, Don’t Break It: Moving Forward with E-Verify,” is authored by Janice Kephart, Director of National Security Studies at the Center and a former counsel to the 9/11 Commission. The report covers the many facets of the E-Verify debate: statistics regarding usage, cost, and effectiveness; legislative history; executive orders affecting the program; the relationship of E-Verify to worksite enforcement; and past improvements to the program as well as future goals.
Among the report’s findings:
- As of the first half of FY 2007, only one-half of one percent of eligible employees screened had to take additional steps to obtain work authorization; overall, the system is 99.5% accurate.
- More than 93 percent of employees are verified within five seconds; another 1.2 percent are verified within 24 hours. A new Photo Screening Tool and a streamlined procedure for naturalized citizens to receive authorization are increasing accuracy and efficiency for employers and employees; naturalized citizens no longer need to take remedial action at Social Security.
- About 5 percent of new employees are not confirmed as work authorized, mirroring the same percentage of illegal aliens estimated to be in the labor force.
- When E-Verify became web-based in 2004, 1,533 employers had signed up. As of September 13, 2008, there are 85,816 employers representing over 446,000 sites and over 6.21 million queries processed. Currently, about 1,000 new employers join per week.
- Eleven states require use of E-Verify in certain circumstances (AZ, CO, GA, ID, MN, MO, MS, NC, OK, RI, and UT). (Emphasis in original.)
Generally I’m one who falls on the side of state’s rights but in this case the national security aspect of the program outweighs the concerns of those who think each state should do its own thing. Since the program is a joint operation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration, as long as we have Social Security there’s good reason to continue the program.
As the CIS noted above, the program is still languishing in limbo but the lame-duck session will give Senators an opportunity to correct the oversight. Normally I’m foursquare behind those items the national Chamber of Commerce desires but not in this case – they’ve been fighting E-Verify tooth and nail.
It’s bad enough the federal government does little to nothing about all the duplicity found in Social Security records – one who has their personal identity stolen will likely see their Social Security number used by a number of others who wish to maintain their residence in the country. But not keeping a program that serves as a disincentive for employers to hire those in the country illegally (generally at the expense of those citizens on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder) seems a poor way to help the working man. Ironically, it’s a Democratic Senator (Robert Menendez of New Jersey) who’s holding up progress on this reauthorization – is he beholden to his country or what I assume is his ancestry?
We have 17 days to act on this, or at least until the 110th Congress comes to an end. Let’s keep E-Verify in place and protect honest, hardworking Americans.
I have a hard time seeing why anyone who is in favor of limited government would support the E-Verify program. It’s sad that the unjustified hysteria over illegal immigration has prompted so many conservatives to forget their skepticism of the government and embrace a Big Brother program like this in an attempt to thwart willing workers and willing employers.
You want to stop certain people from coming to this country to work, which means using the government to arrest those who are doing nothing more than trying to get a job or trying to employ willing workers. In an effort to accomplish this, you then want to concentrate a huge amount of power in federal hands in the form of a national identity database. I fail to see how anyone with any attachment to limited government and proprety rights can support this. Is the “threat” from illegal immigrants (which shouln’t be illegal in the first place) so high as to justify this kind of huge loss of our freedom?
You also might want to read about some of the practical problems of the program: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9256
The Cato piece does make some compelling arguments against the E-Verify program. More importantly, they argue for increasing the number of legal immigrants into the country, which is a move we should eventually adopt once we do a better job securing the borders.
The problem is the here and now, where we have a huge number of people here illegally who are flouting the system. I don’t think E-Verify needs to be a permanent solution, but the federal government does have the ability to set the rules in dealing with them. (I definitely don’t agree with a large number of those rules, though.) Nor do I want a national ID; however, our Social Security numbers have become somewhat of a de facto identification card and it would be good to find out if yours has been compromised.
I knew you would be the person to disagree. In another time, you would have been correct and we may see that time again. But I look at E-Verify as more of a security item which should be reauthorized for another limited term of operation.
A limited government program? Once the power accumulates in DC, it’s next to impossible to get those in power to relinquish it. E-Verify will be a permanent program. I feel confident in predicting that it won’t do anything to solve the “problem” of illegal immigration and soon you’ll see a program that is even more intrusive of our privacy.
I’m glad to see you agree that we should expand legal immigration. I don’t know why you think it should be conditional on securing the borders, though. If you gave people a reasonable way to come here do you really think we’d have a large number of people making the dangerous journal across the border like we do today? If you set up a simple guest worker program and made legal immgration easier, I’d think you’d find the border control problem would be significantly reduced.
I’d also like to know what you think has changed that makes this necessary. September 11? It’s highly unlikely that this system will do anything to prevent terrorism. The cost to our liberty is too great, regardless.
The fear of Mexican laborers and terrorists has caused many Republicans to embrace measures that destroy our freedom. The GOP has little future if it continues to go down this road. Xenophobia and a hatred of civil liberties won’t win us many elections.