E-verify doesn’t prevent US companies from hiring undocumented workers
When federal agents raided dozens of 7-Eleven stores across the US earlier this month and arrested 21 workers suspected of being undocumented immigrants, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tom Homan declared that the highly publicized raids were meant to send a message to employers: “If you are found to be breaking the law, you will be held accountable.”
But after all the smoke from the day’s fiery rhetoric cleared, one huge question remained: How did these undocumented immigrants get hired in the first place?
According to mercurynews.com, at a time when the national debate over immigration is at its tipping point, questions have begun to resurface about E-verify — a 21-year-old electronic program designed to filter out undocumented immigrants who apply for jobs — leaving many Americans wondering how millions of them slip through the system.
After all, credit card companies nearly seamlessly verify tens of millions of 16-digit numbers every day with a tiny little machine that easily fits on the counter of nearly every store in America. What could be so hard about verifying that every job applicant has a valid social security number or ‘alien registration number’ that indicates that the jobseeker is a legal US resident even if he or she is not yet a citizen.
But many immigration policy experts say E-verify is not what it seems. They contend it’s essentially a political fig leaf, with so many significant flaws and loopholes that it allows employers to knowingly hire undocumented workers with little repercussions for doing so.
Only 3,000 of hundreds of thousands of companies enrolled in E-verify were audited during the eight years of the Obama administration, said Daniel Costa, director of immigration law and policy research for the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank based in Washington, DC.
“They continue to be able to hire undocumented workers without having to verify anything with the government,” Costa said.
With such a low chance of being audited, Costa said, E-verify is “a wink and a nod from the government to employers” that lets them continue to hire undocumented workers.
An estimated 763,500 employers were taking part in E-verify as of Jan. 16, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the program.
That sounds like a lot, but it’s only a tiny percentage of the more than 18 million businesses in the US.
The reason for the low participation rate is that the program is voluntary in most states. It’s mandatory only for businesses that have been caught hiring undocumented immigrants.
In the last fiscal year, 98.88 percent of the employees entered into the E-verify system were cleared to work, requiring no employee or employer action, according to USCIS.
Calls for ‘mandatory E-verify’ — particularly among immigration hardliners in the Republican Party — could be heard in the halls of Congress last week as legislators unsuccessfully tried to reach an immigration deal that would allow 800,000 young undocumented immigrants to stay in the US.
Polls have shown that more than twothirds of the American public believe the E-verify should be mandatory.
Capitalizing on that sentiment, Rep. Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who sits on the House Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, recently introduced a measure to require all employers to use the program.
“By expanding the E-verify system to all US employers, this bill will ensure that jobs only go to legal workers,” Smith said.
But Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, a libertarian think-tank in Washington, DC, said E-verify simply checks documents that are submitted and accepts those documents even if they are fraudulent — which is the way most undocumented immigrants secure employment.
The Social Security Administration estimated that 1.8 million immigrants were working with fake or stolen social security cards in 2010 — and that number is expected to reach 3.4 million by 2040.
Even when E-verify is mandated, Nowrasteh said, “a large portion of employers still don’t use it for new hires” because the government audits are so minimal.
“People think this is going to be the way that illegal immigrants can’t work in the US,” he said. “That is fantasy.” So why does the program exist? Nowrasteh contends it’s because Everify allows politicians to claim the US is being tough on immigration without actually having to be tough.
“Nobody wants to shut down businesses. That’s expensive politically and economically,” he said.
“It’s much easier to have a system that doesn’t work (but which) sounds like a silver bullet.”