Tornado Alley (PROG)

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Statement on E-Verify

Statement of Tyler Moran
Policy Director, National Immigration Law Center
House Committee on Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Social Security
Hearing on the Social Security Administration’s Role in Verifying Employment Eligibility
April 14, 2011

.. excerpt ..

This means that in fiscal year 2010 approximately 80,000 workers likely
received erroneous findings from the system and may have lost their jobs as a result.

For example7 –

* A U.S. citizen born in Florida was hired for a good-paying telecommunications position in
October 2010. After hire, she was run through E-Verify and received a TNC. Her employer did
not sit down with her to explain to her what a TNC means, nor to explain any of her rights. The
worker went to her local SSA office twice to try and resolve the situation, but despite SSA telling
her that her information had been updated, the employer told her that she was still not confirmed.
She ultimately received an FNC and was fired. After her termination, she has gone to great
lengths to try and correct this error, but has been unable to do so. She was unemployed for over
3 months, including over the Christmas holiday, but recently accepted a new lower-paid
position. [...]

* A U.S. citizen and former captain in the U.S. Navy with 34 years of service and a history of
having maintained high security clearance was flagged by E-Verify as not eligible for
employment. It took him and his wife, an attorney, two months to resolve the discrepancy.

* A U.S. citizen applied for a position with a temporary agency in California, only to be turned
away because E-Verify was unable to confirm her work authorization. The employer did not
advise her of her right to contest the finding and violated the law by asking her to show
additional documents. She was unemployed for over four months without health insurance and
was diagnosed with a serious illness during that time.

If use of E-Verify were to become mandatory, using Westat’s statistical model, about 1.2 million U.S.
citizen and work-authorized immigrants would have to contact SSA or DHS or risk losing their jobs
and about 770,000 workers would likely lose their jobs. These numbers, however, are likely
underestimates as employers who audit their own E-Verify data report higher error rates than federal
government estimates. For example, when Los Angeles County audited its use of E-Verify for county
workers, it found that 2.0 to 2.7 percent of its TNCs from SSA were erroneous in 2008-09. .. more ..

http://www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/SSA_Related_Info/SSA-subcommittee-Moran-testimony-4-14-11.pdf