E-Verify

I found an article about e-verify and wanted to do more investigation to what it really was. Background checks are a very important part in employing a person. It is verifying that a person is not harmful or will be harmful to an organization and that they have proper documents to work in the United States. Verifying employment eligibility has been a very important topic lately in the United States due to how are economy isn’t doing that well. In 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) was past and it requires that employers are prohibited from knowingly hiring or retaining on the job unauthorized aliens and employers with four or more employees are prohibited from discriminating in hiring or termination decision on the basis of national origin and citizenship. To help keep the IRCA act under control the government came up with a voluntary program system called E-Verify. E-Verify is currently a voluntary program which is run by the United States Government to help certify that employees hired by a company are legally authorized to work in the United States. There are a lot advantages and disadvantages to this E-Verification System.

The advantage to e-verification systems are the following:

- It will verify employment eligibly for new hires and existing employees
- Help maintain legal workforce
- Protect jobs for authorized workers in the United States
- Reduces the number of documents that can be used to prove employment eligibility

The Disadvantages to e-verification systems are the following:

- Misuse of program employers can use e-verify to discriminate against workers
- Compromised privacy
- Unfair burden for business
- High Error Rates

Which this websites powerpoint helps support advantages (to get to the powerpoint check on website under tools on the right hand side of page you will see the “E-Verify for federal contractors Powerpoint”:

http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=75bce2e261405110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=75bce2e261405110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD

Which this youtube video supports the Disadvantages:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hc0RGu3MCE

I did a lot of research on this topic. I have come across a lot of articles talking about the advantages and disadvantages to this e-verify program. Lots of the articles pulled out more negative thoughts then good ones. The two articles that I focus my option on was from the Wyatt Employment Law Report and Chouldhury-Goodman Law affiliates page. According to Glen Krebs from the Wyatt Employment Law Report he says “Participating in E-verify does not provide more protection than I-9 completion against knowingly employing undocumented workers, but there are some risks of discrimination if E-verify is not properly implemented. Employers should carefully consider the pros and cons of participating in the E-verify program.” And according to the Chouldhury-Goodman Law affiliates page, “The huge burden that expanded E-Verify would put on SSA, resulting in longer waiting times for American workers seeking their benefits. Analysis of the program and evidence coming from those who have used it indicate that the current program is seriously flawed, ineffective, and could potentially cost thousands of U.S. citizens and legal residents their jobs due to database errors.” Keeping in mind the research that I did on the USCIS website the advantages are good but are they really that good. A lot of states use this system already. According to EmployeeIssues.com “AK, AZ, CO, GA, MO, MS, OK, SC and RI now require certain employers and state agencies to verify the employment eligibility of new-hires by using the E-Verify System. TN encourages employers to use E-Verify, ID, MN, NC, PA and UT mandate that state agencies must use it CA, CO, FL, IA, IL, IN, KS, MN, MO, NJ, PA, RI, TN and WV and are considering new immigration laws involving E-Verify.” Then as off September 8, 2009 all federal contractors and subcontractors were required to use the E-Verify system. Not to live in a state that doesn’t require e-verify I have a strong opinion about it. I think the system isn’t safe but something has to be done I just think that this system needs a little more time to test run.

http://cglawaffiliates.x2cms.com/blog/?tag=e-verification

http://wyattemployment.wordpress.com/2009/11/03/e-verify-i-9-and-no-match-the-obama-approach/

I personally believe that the e-verification system is a great idea. It has a lot of advantages and disadvantages. One of the disadvantages are compromised privacy to workers private information that will be tracked in the system. There are still internet hackers and other cyber treats that will come to play with this system and what will happen if someone cracked the systems and had million of personal information of different individuals what would happen next. This system also pulls information from databases that are not up to date and that the system has a high error rate it would make a big difference and it wouldn’t prevent authorized individuals from working. A lot of employers can also misuse this system. They could use e-verify to discriminate against workers currently, use it to pre-employment screening, and for termination reasoning. Even though it says you can’t use the system for those reasons but since it’s still available employers may misuse the resources to their advantages. One of the last disadvantages to this system is to implementation of this system. Yes, this system is free but it takes training and development to have the system but it’s a unfair burden cost for business especially because they will have to take the time out to train people who to use this system. Bigger business may be able to afford this cost but smaller businesses may not be able to afford that time.

Other Sources:

http://web.uncg.edu/hrs/documents/employment/basic/BASIC_FAQ.pdf

http://www.uscis.gov/files/nativedocuments/e-ver-employee-rights.pdf http://www.nilc.org/