Fed's Immigration Database Slow To Take Hold Locally | 829 Bay State companies are using E-Verify program to check new hires
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Kirk Carter, head of the immigration practice at Fletcher, Tilton & Whipple in Worcester.
Only 1,744 companies in New England — 829 in Massachusetts — are using the federal government’s free, web-based program to check the immigration status of employees.
Its low use flies in the face of the federal government’s determination to reduce illegal immigrant labor, as mandated by the federal Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
But the program does have some troubling implications, at least according to one local lawyer. Attorney Kirk Carter, who directs the immigration practice at Fletcher, Tilton & Whipple, said immigration practice lawyers and some of the employers they represent are wary of the E-Verify system.
“The problem is that it’s an imperfect system with a lot of glitches. We know that the government is moving quickly toward this system, but people who are authorized to work may be designated as unauthorized through faulty information,” Carter said.
Many of the manufacturing and smaller companies that Carter represents rely on more traditional methods. They have workers fill out the required I-9 or employment eligibility verification forms, which employees sign. They must also provide certain forms of identification, such as U.S. passports, green cards or unexpired foreign passports, which employers compare to images USCIS provides to determine if documents are valid.
Simply put, Carter says E-Verify may be “a system that’s not quite ready for prime time.”
By The Numbers
As of May, there were 69,000 employers across the country using the service. Other New England states have even fewer companies participating: 419 in Connecticut; 138 in New Hampshire; 40 in Vermont; 92 in Maine and 256 in Rhode Island.
In Massachusetts, immigrants make up about 2.3 percent of the state’s population, but less than one percent of the state’s 563,539 businesses use E-Verify.
Stratus Technologies Inc. of Maynard, which makes powerful computer servers that have high availability, is one of the 829 companies in the Bay State using E-Verify. Kevin Donoghue, a company spokesman said it’s “very easy to use,” adding that “there have been no issues” with the program.
The MLS Property Information Network in Shrewsbury has been using it as of this past January.
“It really doesn’t take any training and it usually takes less than three minutes to get verification. You put in the information one way if they’re a citizen with a Social Security number and card, and other way if they have a green card,” said Holly Haines, the network’s director of human resources, who uses it every time she hires someone. None of the workers she has entered have come back as unverified so far.
The low number of Bay State businesses using the service could be due to several factors, including low awareness due to the fact that it’s only been available since 2004. And it is a voluntary program here in Massachusetts.
“It was just a pilot program until a few years ago,” said Shawn Saucier, a spokesman for the U.S. Customs and Immigration Services, the division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Early database accuracy problems have been corrected and anyone “tentatively” flagged as illegal or unauthorized has eight days to clear up any issues.
Political Positions
It’s also a program that both Democrats and Republicans support: a bill to reauthorize E-Verify, which is due to expire in November, sailed through the House of Representatives on July 31, and will now go before the U.S Senate. If it is not reauthorized by November, the program will end.
The government and program supporters claim it is 99 percent accurate because any database inaccuracies don’t affect most employees and any glaring problems were fixed years ago.
Opponents claim that 4.1 percent of the Social Security Administration’s database has discrepancies.
Opponents also raise the issue of potential abuse by employers. The program prohibits employers from using the system as a prescreening of potential employees or of employees that were already employed before the company began using E-Verify. It also prohibits using the system to check on problem employees as a pretext to get rid of them.
The USCIS has a monitoring and enforcement effort, Saucier said, which includes watching how and when employers use the system to cut down on misuse.
But Gisella Martinez, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigration Law Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C., has little confidence in the system.
“USCIS’s monitoring and compliance department is very much understaffed and they do not have the capacity to monitor abuse of the program by the employers,” Martinez said.
But JessicaVaughn, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, believes if all employers used the system not only would illegal immigration decrease, it might solve another national problem.
“With more and more companies using the system, particularly if it were mandatory, there would be less and less opportunity for identity theft. Indirectly that helps the whole nation.
There is a correlation between workers here illegally and identify theft because when you have high levels of illegal immigration, you have high levels of identity theft,” she said.
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