The federal government's E-Verify program, which seeks to reduce the hiring of illegal immigrants, is becoming increasingly popular, with 1,000 new businesses signing up each week despite concerns about its reliability.
More than 124,000 businesses, including nearly 10,000 in California, are signed up for the Web-based identification program that enables employers to check whether an employee is authorized to work, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Among the employers enrolled in the state are restaurants, hospitals and temporary employment agencies.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, May 19, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 86 words Type of Material: Correction
E-Verify: An article in Business on Thursday about the federal program to check whether a person is authorized to work in the U.S. said E-Verify "seeks to reduce the hiring of illegal immigrants." E-Verify seeks to reduce the continued employment, not the hiring, of people unauthorized to work; this includes legal residents who lack work authorization. Also, the article and an accompanying caption indicated that the system could be used to check applicants before they are hired. Employers may not query work authorization until after hiring.
Last week the Obama administration announced that it wanted Congress to allocate $12 million more to the program in the next fiscal year, bringing its budget to $112 million. And Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a congressional hearing that the program was "a cornerstone of workplace enforcement across the country."
"E-Verify is an essential tool for employers to maintain a legal workforce," she said in written testimony. "Nevertheless, room for improvement always remains."
Napolitano said the government planned to improve the accuracy of the databases and strengthen the training of employers to protect workers against discrimination.
E-Verify, run by the Department of Homeland Security, uses government databases to check the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of new hires to determine whether those individuals are eligible to work in the U.S. The program is voluntary, though a few states have passed laws requiring all businesses to participate and several others mandate its use by public employers.
At the end of June, all federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to begin using it. Last fiscal year, more than 6.6 million names were checked under the program, according to the citizenship agency.
E-Verify is an effective way to attack the jobs magnet for illegal immigrants, said Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, which favors stricter controls on immigration. Beck said he hoped the increase in funding would result in more employers signing up.
"If there aren't jobs, they stop coming," he said. "We would rather solve the immigration problems not with people wearing uniforms and guns but simply with papers, just running someone through the computer."
But Angela Kelley, vice president for immigration policy at think tank the Center for American Progress, said E-Verify was not "ready for prime time."
