Heres a surprise. The Obama administration has unveiled a program that, if widely implemented, could dramatically improve immigration enforcement sending millions of illegal immigrants home and reducing greatly the incentives for illegal entry all without arresting and deporting any more people than we do today. It could mean immigration enforcement that is effective, tough, and compassionate. And no one has noticed.
This has been the Holy Grail of immigration enforcers for a generation. So far, theyve pinned their hopes on E-Verify, a voluntary electronic ID check used to enforce the immigration employment laws.
E-Verify works, up to a point. When employers adopt E-Verify, the usual illegal worker scam of making up a Social Security Number doesnt work. E-Verify checks to see whether the new hires name and SSN actually belong together. If they dont match, the new hire has to correct his Social Security records if he wants to keep working.
So far, so good. Not everyone wants E-Verify to succeed, though. Business hates it, and has fought hard to keep it from becoming mandatory. With federal encouragement, several states have made the program mandatory for local businesses, but the Solicitor Generals office recently reversed that federal policy and asked the Supreme Court to overturn state E-Verify laws. If Congress doesnt act, the SGs coup is likely to succeed, for reasons Ive given before.
The real limit on E-Verifys success, however, is identity theft, as critics ranging from the General Accountability Office to the Florida Chamber of Commerce are quick to point out. E-Verify can be fooled if an illegal worker assumes the name and social security number of a real person. E-Verify has struggled with that problem for years. Its had some success, mainly by adding ID photos to the its database, but it is still dogged by the threat of identity theft.
Thats why I was so surprised when the Obama administration solved the problem, more or less overnight.
To understand how, we need to take a closer look at a different problem that I mentioned earlier the pressure on workers to clean up their records quickly. E-Verify is only used by employers after theyve hired someone. That can cause timing problems for legitimate workers who may have a mismatch because they recently naturalized or changed their names without correcting their Social Security records. Although the system has improved greatly recently, E-Verify still flags some of these as a problem, leaving legal workers only a short time to clean up their records if they want to keep working.
Cant we ease this problem, DHS asked, by giving individuals access to the E-Verify system before they apply? They can check their own records to see if theres a matching problem, and if there is, they can cure it on their own timetable, without an employer breathing down their necks.
Thats what E-Verify has begun to do. It is rolling out something called E-Verify Self Check starting in Arizona, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Mississippi, and Virginia. If you live in one of those states, you can go on line here and make sure your records are in order.
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