May 21, 2007

Immigration Proposal Requires Nationwide Employment Verification

The bipartisan immigration reform plan that was announced in the U.S. Senate this week would mandate the development of a national electronic employment verification system affecting every worker in the U.S. If the Senate proposal becomes law, the federal government would have 18 months to ready a system that could handle as many as 60 million employment verification checks annually. The intent is to root out people working here illegally. But no system is perfect, and errors on verification checks could have big consequences: Employees who weren't cleared might lose their jobs, a potential Kafkaesque nightmare for native citizens as well as foreign-born workers.

Senate immigration bill would mandate national employment verification system, Computerworld, May 18, 2007.