If someone tried to force you to pay $312 million for a faulty product, you'd probably be upset.
That is exactly why the business community has joined with labor and civil rights organizations in asking California Governor Jerry Brown to sign a piece of legislation called the "Employment Acceleration Act of 2011" and better known by its bill number, AB 1236.
AB 1236 protects California's businesses and workers from the ill-conceived efforts of some local jurisdictions to force a costly, job-killing federal program called "E-Verify" on private employers; in many locations, the bill would overturn E-Verify mandates that cities have enacted.
Why the widespread uproar? E-Verify is a web-based system that checks employees' work authorization against the social security database. Currently, it is a voluntary program, except for federal contractors, and most businesses don't use it.
Those pushing E-Verify say it identifies workers who do not have authorization to work in the US. But because the social security files are error-ridden, E-verify instead kills jobs, slaps burdens on small businesses, and hurts taxpayers.
According to government data, E-Verify correctly detects unauthorized workers only about half the time. Meanwhile, false positives abound. Consider the testimony of a U.S. citizen and former U.S. Navy captain (with 34 years of service) at a town hall meeting in Ashtabula, OH, a few years back. E-Verify flagged him as not eligible for employment -- and even though his wife is an attorney, it took them two months to clear things up.
Indeed, final error rates in a report commissioned by the US Government suggest that up to 90,000 US citizens and authorized immigrants in California could eventually lose their jobs -- more than the entire population of Santa Barbara, California. Nationally, the figures add up to 770,000 US workers out of work, hardly the right recipe for our economic problems.
Worse yet, small business owners would have to spend hundreds of dollars each in training and certification costs -- adding up to a cumulative total of $312 million for all of California's small businesses.
And it could shrink the coffers of an already stressed state budget. In Arizona, which mandated E-Verify for all businesses, the Arizona Republic newspaper reports many workers have continued to work, but simply been shifted off the tax rolls -- depriving local governments of needed revenue.
The federal government does need to fix our broken immigration system. But mandating E-Verify is just the latest of a series of ideas driven more by emotion than common sense.
Comprehensive immigrant reform should involve integrating workers who are already here, rather than driving them further underground. Meanwhile, forcing job-killing red tape on California's businesses and depriving the state of needed revenue is counterproductive.
It's time for clear thinking and clear action. It's time for Governor Brown to sign AB 1236.
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Manuel Pastor
Professor, American Studies & Ethnicity
Director, Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
Director, Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration
The Feds put a stop to medical marijuana, the cops can search our cells phones upon arrest, and the illegals can go to college and don't have to worry about the possibility of getting caught on e-verify. We are losing our rights as the illegals continue to gain. They already don't have to pay taxes. Is there a line to give this Social Security number back?
The way I have been reading a variety of stories, whenever I see someone use the phrase "job-killing", it's propoganda used for big business to avoid spending any of their hard-horded cash reserves that are doing absolutely nothing for our economy. In addition, the phrase ususally means, they don't want to be bothered because they LIKE hiring illegal immegrents, since they cost less to hire.
So, a simple solution for a fix.... Unemployed? Why not go though the CA Employment Development Department and have them run someone out of work though E-Verify to insure their status is good so there will be no problems with potential employers? And if there is a problem, it will allow the person to fix the problem earlier, rather than when they give their info to a perspective employer.
BTW: People put more worth in something that they have spent a lot of money for that is faulty, than something that works perfect and is free. It's stupid, but it is a scientific fact. Look it up.
Gov Brown: Veto AB 1236.
And E-Verify does not fix the immigration system. It drives undocumented workers further underground - taking away tax dollars from local government. It would destroy industries like agriculture. It is the opposite of a workable solution.
1 - If you're not in the US legally, you should not be working here.
2 - If employers are knowingly hiring illegal workers, they're breaking the law.
E-Verify has problems, but it's what we have. The problem's not with the system, but the data. Dirty data takes time to clean. The only way to clean data is to USE the data and check it in process.
Employers won't support anything that costs them money - even if they must 'skirt' laws. We all know this.
Republicans are acting like isolationists, are against amnasty legistlation and basically want to lock down the US borders.
Democrats want to help everyone, whatever the costs.
We all know the solution is that will keep agra business costs down, provide help to foreign workers but not let them be in the US permenently: Temporary work visas for agraculture business. Work it E-Verify, people could come to the US, work, pay US taxes for a limited time, then leave.
Agra-businesses don't want to follow US labor laws. They'd rather keep their profits high and hire illegals who work below minimum wage. Unskilled US workers won't work if you don't pay minimum wage.
You can't have it all. You either get illegal workers who will work for less and keep prices 'relatively' low, or you verify your workers are legal and absorb the costs. Those are the choices.
It will be good for employers to eliminate E-verify but it won't be good for the people. For those who say there are too many errors in the SS system....perhaps it would be good to fix that.
I do not agree with the aim of forcing all undocumented people out of work. Reliable statistics (not those from Tanton's crew) indicate that the undocumented contribute far more to the economy than they take from it, including shoring up the Social Security system.
However, even if I *did* want the undocumented to be unemployed, I would not be willing to see it done this way. All indications are that EVerify does much more harm than good, and to citizens and legal residents as well as those without documents. It's expensive, a burden on small businesses, and making it mandatory wouldn't help.
If you want to whack the unscrupulous people who hire folks w/o docs because they can underpay and abuse them, you have my blessing. Enforcement of the wage and hour laws -- which DO apply! -- would take care of this nicely.
They don't want any polices that will uncover illegal aliens like local police asking for status or e verify. On Jan 15th 2013 they have another problem, the Real Act for driver licenses in will be enforced nationwide plus so will secure communities, nationwide!!!
E verify brings enforcement into every work place, weeds out the illegal worker, who wouldn't want to be for that? Employers who are paying substandard wages that's who. The economy is not going to get any better for a long time which is very bad for illegals. States don't have money for US citizens and none for illegal foreigners.
"The Westat report’s statistics are based on the time period of April through June 2008. The statistics on our website and that we have cited in testimonies are from a more recent time period (July through September 2008). The Westat report found that 96.4 percent of all cases were found work authorized immediately or within 24 hours (i.e., automatically) and 0.5 percent were found work authorized after employees contested an initial data mismatch. The remaining 3.1 percent of cases were found unauthorized either because the employees did not contest, said they were going to contest and did not follow through, were not aware that they could contest, or contested and were found unauthorized. These statistics cover the time period of April through June 2008. However, USCIS has worked with Westat to produce updated statistics for the subsequent quarter (July through September 2008), during which 96.9 percent of all cases were determined to be work authorized immediately or within 24 hours and 0.3 percent were found work authorized after contesting. The remaining 2.8 percent of cases were found unauthorized."
"The report estimated the program’s total “accuracy” and “inaccuracy” rates for the first time, finding that 96 percent of all E-Verify initial responses were consistent with the person’s work authorization status, and that the remaining 4.1 percent3 inaccuracy rate was primarily due to identity fraud."
Second of all, as we've seen in Arizona, mandatory E-Verify actually pushes undocumented workers deeper into the shadows, depriving local governments of needed revenues, and destabilizing industries like agriculture that depend on immigrant labor. E-Verify does not fix any of our problems. On the other hand, immigration reform that levels the playing field for all workers and lets immigrants fully contribute would strengthen the economy.
Tex- My sense is that you should read the actual report. E-verify is accurate 96 percent of the time because so many people are actually authorized to work -- at the most, only about five percent of the U.S. labor force might be undocumented. On page 7, Westat reports that about half of the undocumented are not picked up by E-Verify. And other data suggests about .5% of those who are documented to work get reported as undocumented.
H.R. 2885 tackles this problem by ordering the Social Security Administration to identify the valid names/numbers that most likely are being used by identity thieves. The process starts by identifying employees with more than one employer reporting income to their Social Security number. Then, it looks for “unusual use patterns,” such as that the employers are in different geographic regions or represent different occupations, and so on.
The SS Administration would send a letter to that name at each address listed on a W-2 form with information on all the jobs that person supposedly is holding (some Social Security numbers are used for hundreds of jobs) and a toll-free number to call if the person is not working for all those employers and so believes he or she is the victim of identity theft.
Once the actual owner of the SS number comes forward and is identified, along with his/her place(s) of employment, that SS number will be locked down as belonging only to the actual owner, and all other employers will be notified to run the persons of that name and number through E-Verify, at which point they will be ordered fired. (All the safeguards for Americans and legal immigrants under E-Verify will be there under this “Multiple-Workplace Notification” system.)"
They should cross check SS numbers with social security, IRS and ICE and stop using ITINs.
California does not even want to report criminal felon aliens to ICE because they may get deported, let California rot.