IPUrbia

A comment to my previous post elicited an anonymous response by an individual who “works closely with E-verify” and took umbrage over my analysis that the program unfairly labels the person a criminal. I am posting their full comment below at the end of this posting for those interested in it.

In general, their response typifies some of the problems in policy decisions these days. The anonymous poster argues that workers are protected by “ample time to resolve the issue,” “legal protection against firings”, and “feedback” on their status.

Unfortunately, I tend to think that these “protections” are somewhat idealistic and naive, for the following reasons.

1. Legal Protection: While there is legal protection against being fired over inaccuracies in the database; it nevertheless does happen: in industries where workers are low skilled and plentiful; many employers have no interest in resolving this with the employee and will simply fire the worker. The audio clip of the NPR segment linked to in the original article (and available here) has a story of this exact scenario and indicates that this IS (however nicely the process is politicized) not an isolated incident. While the employee in the story was able to get their job back, doing so required legal action which is simply an undue burden, especially since most of the people involved in such situations will have quite limited financial resources. Criminalize them all and let the courts sort it out is not responsible governance. BTW, what legal action has the federal government taken against the employer in the above segment for violating employment law on several counts?

2. Feedback: The anonymous poster makes a couple of contradictory statements about feedback:

Third, the employee does indeed receive ‘feedback’ on why E-Verify could not confirm his or her status – within seconds of the query, the program transmits a message stating either ‘work authorized’ or ‘tentative non-confirmation, SSA unable to confirm’ or ‘tentative non-confirmation, DHS unable to confirm,’ and instructs the employee on how to resolve it. Thus, the employer instantly knows which agency was not able to verify employment authorization and provides the employee with this information so the employee can resolve the issue.

While the initial claim is that the employee receives feedback “within seconds of the query”; the poster goes on to state that the employer (NOT the employee) is the one actually receives the feedback and is responsible to relaying that on to the employee. How many people will just be “let go” because of this and not be told the reason?

3. Ample time to resolve the issue: This is the only valid point; the government does allow 3 months for employees to work through these issues and validate their information and citizenship. Still, given the above two problems, there are and will be people (too many people) who don’t ever get the opportunity.

In the end, these protections might be ample IF the database was reasonably accurate. However, given the 10% inaccuracy rate, it is downright irresponsible of the Federal Government to proceed with this program. While I generally dislike these programs in general; the government could have at least implemented this program in a responsible manner which involves, at the very least, making the database accurate to at least 99% (and 99.9% should really be the target) and clarifying inaccuracies directly with the employee, NOT through the employer.

Further, if the Bush Administration really were interested in dealing with illegal immigration, they would proceed in a manner that is consistent with their love of “supply side economics” and target the businesses that knowingly employ illegal immigrants with no pretense of false documents or employment taxes; I can supply a list of at least a dozen to get the process started. However, given the relative political clout, campaign donations, and so forth of business owners compared to the average employee, I fully expect their ill-advised policies to continue full steam under the usual politicized pretenses and no real expectation of actual results despite the billions of dollars of tax dollars and the human costs of innocent citizens mistakenly caught up in the overly aggressive dragnet.

Yes, there are protections. Yes, there are recourses. But, for the people who get mistakenly caught up in this mess, it is simply an undue burden and, given the rate of inaccuracies, it is simply too much of a burden on too many people.

It should not be our burden to clean up your mess.

Now, as promised, is the comment:

I think clarification on your post is needed because many of your points are simply not accurate. In particular, the comment, “..90% accuracy for a database that will instantly label you a criminal and drop you from the potential employment pool, most likely without any feedback as to the source of your miseries?” is problematic and very misleading. As someone who works closely with E-Verify, I can attest that the program does not “instantly label you a criminal..”

First, there are many reasons as to why an employee’s information would cannot be confirmed immediately, including becoming a citizen and neglecting to update your information with the Social Security Administration, getting married and neglecting to update your information, etc. etc. In no way does the program make the assumption that the employee is not authorized to work in the U.S. or label the employee a ‘criminal.’ In fact, in most cases the initial non confirmation occurred because the employee neglected to update his or her own records.

Secondly, if the initial query does not result in a message stating the employee is work authorized, the employee has ample time to resolve the issue with either Social Security Administration or Dept of Homeland Security. In the majority of cases, the case is resolved within 24 hours. Since the employer is required to allow the employee to continue working during this timeframe, employees are not adversely affected whatsoever, other than being inconvenienced with going to the local Social Security office to update their records (which they are required to do regardless of whether their employer uses E-Verify).

Third, the employee does indeed receive ‘feedback’ on why E-Verify could not confirm his or her status – within seconds of the query, the program transmits a message stating either ‘work authorized’ or ‘tentative non-confirmation, SSA unable to confirm’ or ‘tentative non-confirmatin, DHS unable to confirm,’ and instructs the employee on how to resolve it. Thus, the employer instantly knows which agency was not able to verify employment authorization and provides the employee with this information so the employee can resolve the issue. I realize that many are not familiar with E-Verify, and as a result misconceptions abound, but I believe that one should know the facts before casting criticism, or he or she risks the unfortunate circumstance of making false claims.