At the heart of Congress’ immigration debate are proposals to electronically screen new hires to weed out illegal workers.
The idea isn’t new. For 10 years, employers who volunteered to be part of the pilot program have been allowed to type the names and identities of potential workers into a database to make sure they can be legally hired. So far, the results have been spotty.
“There are so many deficiencies that it is hard to pick one that is the most disconcerting,” said U.S. Chamber of Commerce immigration expert Randel Johnson.
Proponents say worker verification is the best way to deter illegal immigration.
Bills in the Senate and House of Representatives propose to expand the program known as Basic Pilot. The program, which now encompasses 6,200 volunteer companies, would expand to all 8.5 million of the nation’s employers. Cost estimates range from $120 million to $2 billion.
Nearly 500 companies in Washington, Maryland and Virginia are enrolled in Basic Pilot. None would agree to talk to the media, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Immigration expert Tamar Jacoby, of the Manhattan Institute, said the program doesn’t work very well, and fixing and expanding it so greatly will be expensive. “But it’s the right idea,” Jacoby said.
Because employment is the biggest attraction of immigrants to the United States, giving employers a tool to screen out illegal workers is essential to controlling the border, she said.
The system runs the employee’s identity through a Social Security database and a Department of Homeland Security database.
A Government Accountability Office report released last year said the program has the potential to improve the worker verification process. But the system often fails to detect identity fraud, the government is slow to update its database and sometimes that information is inaccurate.
Big business worries that such a system will be a costly burden and rife with errors. Civil libertarians argue that it will be vulnerable to identity theft and government abuse. Labor contends that inaccuracies will cost workers jobs and employers might retaliate against those whose eligibility isn’t automatically verified.
Eighty-five percent of all queries are OK’d, said USCIS spokesman Chris Bentley. Workers who are unconfirmed are allowed to stay on the job and appeal the results.
About 20 percent of those who came out negative were later determined to be authorized to work, according a government study. About 1 in 8 queries is never resolved.
The Basic Pilot
» Employers enter a worker’s name, date of birth, citizenship status and Social Security number. The program checks the information against a Department of Homeland Security database and a Social Security database containing 422 million files.
» In the District, 152 employers are using the pilot verification program; in Maryland, 91 employers are using it; and in Virginia, 218 employers are using it.
» Eighty-five percent of all queries are confirmed for employment; of the unconfirmed, nearly one-third were challanged by the employee.
