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E-Verify or E-Deny
Compared to my colleagues, I am by far the most politically inactive immigration attorney I know. Yes, I vote, but as a matter of civic duty more than anything else. However, yesterday I felt compelled to spend the afternoon at the state Senate waiting to be heard on Senate Bill 844 (SB 844). SB 844 is the Maryland version of the federal government's E-Verify program. Similar to the federal E-Verify program, the state version requires "... an employer under a State procurement contract or State grant to verify through the E-verify program the employment eligibility of each employee hired under the contract; prohibiting an employer under a State procurement contract or State grant from knowingly hiring an alien who does not have the right to work in the United States..."
On its face and in theory, E-Verify seems reasonable. Why shouldn't employers receiving federal and/or state funds be required to ensure that the money will be received by those authorized to work and thus, eligible to receive these funds? Because in practice, E-Verify in its current state is not able to accurately verify an individual's work status. A recent study performed by the Weststat group, a Maryland-based social science research firm under contract to USCIS, reported that E-Verify was able to correctly identify 93% of the time those individuals who were authorized to work. However, the system failed miserably to identify unauthorized workers by incorrectly clearing them as eligible for work 56% of the time.
Just as troubling is what happens when E-Verify incorrectly identifies a person as being unauthorized for work, and as a result issues a "tentative nonconfirmation notice" (TNC). Legally, an employer is required to inform the individual of the TNC and provide information on how the issue may be corrected. When this doesn't happen, honest citizens are left jobless and wondering why no one will hire them. Just ask Abel Pacheco, a US citizen who found himself jobless and unemployable due to an E-Verify error. Potential employers would not hire Mr. Pacheco because of the TNC, and yet no one informed Mr. Pacheco of the TNC as required by law. Fortunately for Mr. Pacheco he was able to eventually find a job and informed of the TNC, but only after he and his family had suffered considerable financial hardship.
Even more troubling is an inherent flaw in E-Verify which discriminates against naturalized citizens. According to the Weststat report, naturalized citizens are three times more likely to receive a TNC than US born citizens. The inherent discrimination is a result of the information stored by the Social Security Administration's (SSA) database upon which E-Verify relies to confirm a person's work eligibility. The SSA database was not built for verification purposes. The SSA database includes information provided by the SSN owner the last time that person visited an SSA field office or submitted information to ask for a card to be created. When an immigrant naturalizes, there is no automatic process for notifying SSA of his or her new citizenship status. Thus, SSA would not be able to confirm work eligibility, and E-Verify would issue a TNC, which essentially would result in the US citizen being denied work if the employer fails to inform the US citizen of the TNC.
For a system that will cost the federal government and the tax payers $10 million in 2010, these errors and flaws are unacceptable. Adopting such a costly and ineffective program in Maryland when the Maryland Budget and Tax Policy Institute projects a deficit of at least $2 billion in 2010 is not fiscally sound policy.
Categories: Immigration Law