WASHINGTON, DC. March 6, 2008 – Today Congressman Ken Calvert (R-CA) responded to HR Initiative’s erroneous press release on the E-Verify Program.

"HR Initiative claims to support employment verification but seems intent on killing the only program available to employers to check the legal status of their employees, known as E-Verify," stated Rep. Calvert.

In a press release last week HR Initiative (http://www.legal-workforce.org) stated the following:

"The New Employee Verification Act (NEVA) introduced today is designed to provide a superior, user-friendly electronic employment verification system by replacing the current paper-based and error-prone method of verifying employment eligibility."

NEVA, H.R. 5515, would replace E-Verify yet use the same information, such as Social Security numbers and names, to check the legal status of a new employee.

The current system, E-Verify, is web-based, accurate and timely. Employers can sign up through the website at www.uscis.gov/everify and verify that the name matches the Social Security number given on the I-9 form entirely online.

Through E-Verify, participating employers have successfully instantly verified employment eligibility for 93% of new hires to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) database information.  Of the remaining 7% that were not verified instantly, less than 1% of those employees contested the results. 

Most employees who receive a mismatch notice either choose not to contest it or indicate that they will contest that finding but then fail to follow through.  In addition, the mismatch notices received by persons who are not work authorized -- currently, about 5% of all E-Verify queries – are not mismatches that we would want to eliminate.  Instead, these mismatches are the result of E-Verify doing what it is intended to do: quickly verify the status of those who are work authorized and those who are not. This process is done instantly 98% of the time, according to the latest Westat report.

There are currently nearly 56,000 employers representing 224,330 work sites, signed up to use E-Verify and at year to date, over 2.1 million queries were run through the program.  On average, more than 1,000 new employers are joining each week.

On January 1, 2008, the State of Arizona began requiring all employers in the state to use the E-Verify program. Currently, over 20,000 employers in Arizona participate in the E-Verify program, representing more than 35,000 work sites.

In September of 2007, E-Verify’s new photo screening tool became a mandatory feature for all new and existing users of the program. The photo tool is the first step in giving employers tools to help detect identity theft in the employment eligibility process.  The employers can now check the photo on their new hire’s Employment Authorization Document (EAD) or Permanent Resident Card ("green card") against nearly 15 million images stored in the Department of Homeland Security immigration databases.  This tool is designed to detect when a photo is superimposed on an authentic immigration identification card or when the document is counterfeit but contains valid information with a different photo.  At the end of FY08, the program projects 150,000 employer participants in the E-Verify program.  This would result in an estimated 5 million newly hired employees being run through the program that fiscal year.

"The New Employee Verification Act attempts to reinvent the wheel by shutting down E-Verify and starting from scratch, at the expense of the American taxpayer," said Rep. Calvert. "The bill also ensures that employment verification will never become a reality by requiring a 99% accuracy rate on the first try. Opponents of employment verification will continue to pedal the promise of a perfect yet fictional program when they know that such a program is not possible. For those of us who truly want employment verification, it is imperative that we build upon the decade of experience and success of E-Verify and extend the program and make it mandatory."

Rep. Calvert authored the E-Verify program, originally called the Basic Pilot Program. From its humble beginnings in 5 states, it is now a nationwide program. He introduced a bill in the 110th Congress, H.R. 19, to make E-Verify mandatory, requiring the largest businesses to be compliant within one year.

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