President George Bush issued an Executive Order which amends Executive Order 12989 yesterday, which will require federal contractors to use the E-Verify system to verify a person's eligibility to work, making sure they are in the U.S. legally.
As the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explains the system, E-Verify is a free Internet-based system that allows enrolled employers to confirm the legal status of new hires within seconds.
In the Executive Order it states
Because of the worksite enforcement policy of the United States and the underlying obligation of the executive branch to enforce the immigration laws, contractors that employ illegal aliens cannot rely on the continuing availability and service of those illegal workers, and such contractors inevitably will have a less stable and less dependable workforce than contractors that do not employ such persons. Where a contractor assigns illegal aliens to work on Federal contracts, the enforcement of Federal immigration laws imposes a direct risk of disruption, delay, and increased expense in Federal contracting. Such contractors are less dependable procurement sources, even if they do not knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers.
"Contractors that adopt rigorous employment eligibility confirmation policies are much less likely to face immigration enforcement actions, because they are less likely to employ unauthorized workers, and they are therefore generally more efficient and dependable procurement sources than contractors that do not employ the best available measures to verify the work eligibility of their workforce. It is the policy of the executive branch to use an electronic employment verification system because, among other reasons, it provides the best available means to confirm the identity and work eligibility of all employees that join the Federal workforce. Private employers that choose to contract with the Federal Government should meet the same standard.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was quoted in the DHS press release as saying, "A large part of our success in enforcing the nation's immigration laws hinges on equipping employers with the tools to determine quickly and effectively if a worker is legal or illegal. E-Verify is a proven tool that helps employers immediately verify the legal working status for all new hires."
That release also asserts that over 69,000 employers currently use the E-Verify system and in the fiscal year of 2008, over 4 million employment verification queries have been made and 99.5 percent of qualified employees are cleared automatically by E-Verify.
Statement from employers that have use the system show the E-Verify program is "user friendly", as shown by Pat Villalobos, president and owner of Barnhart/Taylor, which provides engineering, heating and ventilation, bids on government contracts and has worked on various projects at Fort Bliss, who says, "When it comes to my employees, I keep up with their documents When they come work for me, I ask them for their documents, especially if they're going to be on government property.
"The E-Verify system is very user-friendly."
As of November of 2007, there was a glaring problem with E-Verify, to which it would identify false Social Security numbers, it was not capable of determining legitimate documents that have been stolen and there were those that were not authorized that were later determined to be legally able to work in the United States.
In one case it was as simple as the man's records had not been updated since he became a US citizen.
Since then, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced on May 5, 2008, that they had made improvements to the system, saying, "Less than one percent of all work-authorized employees receive a tentative nonconfirmation through E-Verify. While this is a very small percentage, we believe every employee who is authorized to work in the United States should be instantly authorized by the program. We're confident that the enhancements we're launching today will help us achieve that goal."
Those improvements will be the inclusion of naturalization data, which will help instantly confirm the citizenship status of naturalized U.S. citizens hired by E-Verify employers, real time arrival data from the Integrated Border Inspection System and they will initiate citizenship status records information sharing with Social Security Administration (SSA) to further help prevent tentative nonconfirmations from occurring.
This latest Executive order is the next step in trying to make sure that employers are not offering the incentive of a job, for those entering the United States illegally.
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