e-Verify. A good idea that has proved successful in helping businesses with their efforts to weed out illegal hires? Or simply a cover for employers to in fact “get away” with illegal hiring, even as they are touting their compliance?
That’s the framework of a story Gregg Dourgarian posed when he sent me an email query about the subject, asking if I could do some research. Because anecdotally he says, he can confirm from visits with many staffing companies around the country, that e-verify actually serves as the perfect excuse for employers to 
get away with illegal hiring.
“Interestingly, I agree completely with the perspective of Leftists on this,” Gregg told me. “They say Americans are being denied jobs in part because e-Verify makes it so easy for employers to use cheap illegals (see link). Where I disagree with them is whether any law can be effective for long in enforcing a market disequilibrium. Just like moonshine made it into the hands of the thirsty despite prohibition, cheap labor inside our borders will be sought out by employers despite e-Verify (or any other regulation).”
While approximately 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed, 7 million individuals work illegally in the United States.
“Just like moonshine made it into the hands of the thirsty despite prohibition, cheap labor inside our borders will be sought out by employers despite e-Verify (or any other regulation).”
One of the posters on the site in the link Gregg refers to claims “employers don’t want a system that would correctly identify unauthorized workers.” He also says that except for situations of identity fraud detectable by the Photo Screening Tool, if the counterfeit documents are of reasonable quality and contain information about actual work-authorized persons who resemble the worker providing the documentation, the Form I-9 process and the E-Verify system will incorrectly confirm the bearer as work authorized.
“One might conclude, therefore,” says the poster, “that this system does not work, or one might conclude that the system is working EXACTLY as intended. At a time when millions of Americans are out of work, this Bush-era program is spending millions to put foreign nationals to work in our labor force, while at the same time yielding an unacceptably high rate of rejection of legal, foreign-born citizens. A system that enables a foreign national to work with illegally obtained ‘breeder’ documents while denying work to foreign-born U.S. citizens who have followed all the rules is simply unacceptable.”
Arizona, home to as many as 460,000 undocumented immigrants, has been one of the centers of the national debate about illegal immigration for years. Employment, in turn, is one of the focal points of the immigration discussion because most border-crossers come to the U.S. looking for jobs.
“There is no way to completely, 100 percent, prevent workers who are not authorized to work in the United States from being on the payroll,” said attorney Christy Hubbard in a 2010 article in the Arizona Republic, while she was working at Lewis & Roca law firm in Phoenix. “The reason why is that people have documents that make them look like they are authorized to work.”
“There is no way to completely, 100 percent, prevent workers who are not authorized to work in the United States from being on the payroll.”
Most hiring staffers aren’t fake-ID experts, and so even companies with good intentions can unwittingly break the law, right along with employers who intentionally flout the law.
Even though neither the state government nor the feds can audit every single business for compliance, others are watching. There is a website called e-verifywatchdog.com that lists Arizona companies they claim are in non-compliance with the Arizona Employer Sanctions law that requires businesses to use e-Verify. Similarly, there is also a link to this list of hundreds of businesses they claim are in compliance.
We didn’t find any staffing companies in the non-compliant list, and found plenty listed among the compliant companies.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney even referenced the E-Verify program last month in a debate among GOP presidential hopefuls in Mesa.
“As a result of E-Verify being put in place, the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent, where the national average has only gone down 7 percent,” stated Romney.
“As a result of E-Verify being put in place, the number of people in Arizona that are here illegally has dropped by some 14 percent, where the national average has only gone down 7 percent,” stated Romney.
Romney got his numbers from a January 2010 report from the Department of Homeland Security, according to his press secretary. But according to the website Arizona Fact Check, Romney was being conservative with his numbers. In fact, DHS says the number of illegal immigrants in Arizona fell by 16 percent in the two years after the sanctions law was enacted, 2 percentage points higher than what Romney said.
I called several staffing companies in Arizona hoping to find someone who would go on record discussing their hiring practices, and whether they have heard of employers using e-Verify as a cover for hiring illegals. Unfortunately I did not find any who would agree to talk once I told them what I wanted to talk about, a skittishness that is not too surprising perhaps given the legal issues at stake here.
Although the federal government doesn’t require businesses to use E-Verify (except for certain companies that have government contracts), the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a state law implemented in 2008, does.
I did find a staffing and recruiting firm in Colorado, another state with lots of undocumented immigrants, who was promoting their decision to participate in the e-Verify program.
J. Kent Staffing signed the MOU with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last month, saying the company recognizes the importance of employing a legal workforce, particularly since many clients are holders of federal contracts.
With heightened awareness about Denver’s legal workforce, we have implemented the E-Verify program for the benefit of all J. Kent clients, for profit, non-profit, governmental contractors or entities in all our areas of Expertise. Although E-Verify Bill HR 2164 – The Legal Workforce Act* is requiring all employers to use the system phased-in over the next three years, we believe that E-Verify is a good, practical, business practice today. Conclusion: implementation at a later date serves no purpose. Therefore, effective February 17, 2012, all J. Kent staff members assigned to our Denver client companies are processed through E-Verify, a companion to Form I-9.
Participation in E-Verify is free and voluntary, and has been available for every business in the country since late 2004. More than 288,000 employers, large and small, across the United States use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of their employees, with about 1,200 new businesses signing up each week according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
We ran a shorter story in Staffing Talk last August asking whether in fact e-Verify “works.” Here is what one reader left in the comments section of that story.
“Not only does it not work, but in many cases it is actually helping the illegals keep their jobs. In the construction trades many employers know that they are illegal but simply help them buy running new cards as the bring them until they find one that works. I have worked for an employer who started E-verify and had to get rid of 12 illegals. Within 2 months they were all back with new ss#. Not only were they back, but they were now in the system and set as a priority for work because the employer knew that if the were off of work too long they would need to be re-verified. In the construction trades alone millions of illegals are working while American citizens sit watching our government do nothing to help the problem.”
“Not only does it not work, but in many cases it is actually helping the illegals keep their jobs.”
Any suggestions? Are there are any Staffing Talk readers who have heard of using e-Verify as a cover for the deliberate hiring of illegals? Is the program a good one, or should it be dismantled and demolished? I’m looking forward to some spirited debate on this one.
{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Given the high unemployment rate, we should do more to make e-Verify more effective. As it is, the illegals keep their jobs, the employers keep their cheap workers, and the politicians take credit for doing something about the problem. Something for everyone but the American worker.
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Very well said, Stephanie. Do you have any recommendations on how to improve e-Verify?
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Or, E-Verify could go around telling all of you prospective employers that they cannot confirm your citizenship, though you were born here to parents that have history dating back to the Mayflower, and are both resting eternally at Arlington. Not to mention that I have voted in the Presidential election many, many times…in the meantime, they’ve wrecked MY life and finances, as well as have kept me from getting a job! Finally, I find one that decided to train me while waiting for E-Verify to do their thing. Now, I have a letter telling me I have eight days to get this straightened out!!! I am 58, and an AMERICAN born in a U.S. Naval Hospital!!!
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Hi Stephanie, thanks for your comment. The more I learned of this issue, the more I realized e-Verify does little to help the group it was created to help. As you say, the American worker. It is so counterintuitive – and wrong – to have a government mechanism that in any form or fashion actually makes it easier to hire illegals. But it looks like that’s what we have in the form of e-Verify.
how has your personal experience been using everify?
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My company currently uses eVerify and it’s a waste of about 2 minutes per candidate. I have seen ID’s that I know were fake (Social Security Cards printed askew, etc.) that eVeify gives a green light to.
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Steven-
I’m curious about why you would be accepting documentation that you know is fake, to begin with?
On the I-9 it states “I attest, under penalty of perjury, that I have examined the document(s) presented by the above-named employee, that the above-listed document(s) appear to be genuine”
Why would someone in your office be certifying, with their signature, that the documents they have examined are genuine when they are clearly fake?
That isn’t E-Verify’s fault- the social security number/card probably is eligible for work, just not for the person who is in possession of it in your office.
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Excellent question, Lisa!
For the Staffing division of our company, we never would. I kindly state something like, “Oh, I’ll need to see the original, this is a copy, isn’t it?” which usually results in the candidate saying they’ll bring the original back later, and never seeing them again.
As a PEO, we often bring on new clients and they have in their existing staff a person with bogus documents that were accepted by the client. We run them, fully expecting a ‘failed to verify’ only to be surprised. It’s part of the challenge as a PEO and the co-employment relationship. Once a client is on-boarded, the problem is eliminated as we handle those functions for them.
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Thank you for the explanation, Steven! Makes sense, now!
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I’ve been in Staffing in California for over 13 years and spent a good deal of that staffing Industrial or Light Industrial clients. In 2003 I was staffing for a recycling company in Sacramento that touted the fact they verified all of their employees. This was back when it was done by phone. What they didn’t share so freely was that about 20 percent of their workforce was temporary, and that they didn’t ask their Staffing companies to verify.
In less than 3 months working with them, I became an expert on fake documents. Some were harder to detect, while other were social security cards on standard copy paper. In that time, I accumulated over 70 applications with false documents. I reported this to the INS, FBI and local Sheriff’s office, thinking that if not to nab the illegal immigrants, they may want to grab the identity thieves. No one would touch them.
To me, the theft of identities is as bad, if not a worse crime against legal workers.
The reason eVerify will not work is because no one wants it to work. If they did, they would crack down on employers who continuously report wages under a bad number, and on the people using documents not issued to them. Keep in mind, these folks are usually putting down their correct addresses on the applications, because they want to get their checks if hired. Easy tracking.
I am fairly confident that one of the reasons that there is a lack of interest is that when an undocumented worker uses a fake social, they are collecting Social Security, Taxes, etc. that are not going to be claimed. There’s money in it for the Government as well.
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No existe migracion ilegal !!! Hay derechos universales.
Cada persona la libertad de transito y el dercho al trabajo…
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That was a silly thing to say Felipe.
If a person has entered another Country without adhering to the laws of that Nation, they have; by definition immigrated illegally.
There are Universal rights, however the ability to violate immigration and labor laws are not among them.
It is also withing the sovereignty of each Nation to decide things such as whether those people, who have violated laws by entering the Country without permission, are allowed to work or not.
On a more personal note, it seems cowardly to enter a discussion and make an inflammatory comment in a different language. That you understood the comments means you either speak and read English or are technically savvy enough to use translation software. Be courageous and allow your comments to be understood by the entire forum.
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Thank you, Steven!
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I placed over 300 employees using e-verify at a client in central Mississippi over a two year period (temp to hire). This was a fairly simple process once a somewhat convoluted training process was completed; however, I noticed an interesting side effect that to this day, everyone involved claimed was a coincidence: on several occasions U.S. Marshalls came and arrested employees with outstanding warrants within the first week I hired them through e-verify. Hmmmm. I was also treated to a lovely U.S. DOL compliance audit for three years of payroll that included a review of I-9 compliance (with no deficiencies or violations). It was a fun ride–oh, I forgot about compliance with the Migrant Workers Protection Act–I did not have any migrant workers but was supplying labor to the poultry industry. I would agree that the program does NOT stop illegals who present a valid name and social security match that have authentic looking counterfeit identification, by the way…
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Lowest rates for i9/w4 documentation…guaranteed to pass e-Verify. Confidendtial. Overnight delivery. ezLegal101@gmail.com
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You are correct that E-Verify doesn’t stop employees from illegally obtaining employment with fraudulent documents, but it does stop them from using any SSN number that doesn’t match the name that it issued to. This stops the obviously fraudulent cases. Now the wages will be reported to a valid SSN number and the person who it was issued to will received a SSN summary of wages at the end of the year. This should cause the number of identity theft claims to rise as this program (e-verify) continues and raises illegal employment to a higher level of visibility and criminal behavior.
This will force the illegally population to be slightly more in the daylight, as now there will be someone else fighting to stop the use of that SSN number. Namely the owner. This (identity theft) has always been the unspoken crime associated with illegal employment. This I believe will bring more resources to fight the overall issue of identity-theft and in turn make it much tougher to use someone else’s SSN for very long.
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Most illegal immigrants. Don’t know English or know very little English do not have a valid ssn. And can’t receive help from the government and still manage to beat you at a job! Instead of trying to get rid of them you should be asking yourself what is it your doing that you can’t hold a job. Unemployment shouldn’t even exist we live in America if there is a will there is a way have you ever thought that maybe yoou don’t have go work for someone to make a living open up a small business or something..I’m just saying if there’s NO WILL in john or shaniqua there’s definitely NO WAY you will beat Jose at a job lmfao
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