Immigration Proposals' Reliance on E-Verify Threatens Privacy

Everybody into the database!

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security held a hearing yesterday on E-Verify, which would create a huge database of every person eligible to work in America. Many members of Congress from both parties think a mandatory E-Verify system — along with ongoing increases in spending at the border—is a silver bullet for immigration enforcement. Right now it's a voluntary system, but mandatory E-Verify would obligate all employers to run new hires through the system to verify electronically their eligibility to work in this country. That might sound reasonable – but the problem is that the E-Verify system is seriously flawed.

In addition to putting the burden of immigration enforcement on employers—which is certainly not their job—E-Verify is not always accurate. The government has worked to correct many errors, but even if the database had an error rate of just one percent, that would equate to approximately 1.5 million mischaracterized Americans who would run into barriers when next seeking employment. To clear their names, these people would have to navigate the bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration to correct their profile in order to get work. In an economy that is still struggling, we don't need to adopt new obstacles to employment.