Waiting game again on E-Verify

Sen. Marc Cote thinks there is enough support in the state Senate to pass the so-called E-Verify system for newly hired workers. What the Woonsocket Democrat is less sure of, however, is the bill even getting to the full chamber for a vote this year.
Cote, the lead sponsor of the Senate bill, S 210, noted last week that the proposed measure has more than 21 sponsors out of the 38 state senators.
And when the Senate Judiciary Committee considered the legislation recently, Cote liked what he heard from the panel. “I sensed an open-mindedness,” he told Providence Business News.
But whether the proposal will be voted out of committee for consideration by the full Senate is in doubt.
Sen. Michael J. McCaffrey, D-Warwick, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, did not immediately respond to requests for comment last week.
So far, history has been against Cote and other supporters of the measure that would require Rhode Island employers to check the employment eligibility of newly hired workers through the national Web-based system as a way of curtailing illegal immigration.
In the past two years, similar bills have been passed by the House only to die in a Senate committee during the final days of the session.
This year, the House already has approved a measure, H 5143, that watered down penalties for scofflaw businesses, but by a narrower margin than in previous sessions. Some have speculated that the closer vote may be a signal that support for E-Verify is fading.
But Cote chalked it up to a new group of legislators elected into office last November – all of them Democrats. The new lawmakers are “not as up on the legislation,” Cote said. “They’re not immersed in the bill.”
There is no question that the idea of mandating E-Verify for Rhode Island businesses has been controversial.
The opposition to E-Verify – including immigrants’ rights advocates – has asserted that the system has a high error rate, particularly among foreign-born residents, and some have expressed concern that employers would avoid hiring people who would be more likely to raise a red flag to avoid potential problems with the government. Backers of E-Verify have insisted that reports of a high error rate are untrue.
Labor attorney Neal J. McNamara, a partner in the Providence office of Nixon Peabody LLP, said he’s been telling client companies who have called for advice on how to proceed to hold off on registering, since it’s not yet required.
Questions about the error rate have McNamara doubting the system.
While clients are supportive of weeding out job applicants who are ineligible for employment, he said, E-Verify “doesn’t get you were you want to go… [Companies] don’t want to lose good job candidates.”
Other critics have raised concerns about E-Verify creating an unnecessary burden for local businesses that would have to learn to use and administer the program.
But not all business owners feel that way. David R. Carlin III, a lobbyist for the Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce Coalition, said the group has remained neutral because its membership of about 12,000 is split roughly 50-50 on E-Verify.
Nevertheless, participation in the system by Rhode Island businesses has been on the rise, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that oversees E-Verify.
As of May 1, 1,576 Rhode Island companies have registered for E-Verify – from large employers such as CVS and FM Global to smaller ones such as Blackstone Valley Lawn Care LLC and D&D Shoe and Leather Repair.
Helping to push participation was an executive order last year from Gov. Donald L. Carcieri that required state administrators and contractors working for the state to register for E-Verify. The order was upheld in R.I. Superior Court in April after the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit to block it.
Carcieri spokeswoman Amy Kempe said last week that the administration isn’t necessarily policing existing contractors for compliance, but she said E-Verify participation is checked before contracts are renewed or new ones are awarded. Kempe could not immediately provide figures on how many contractors have shown evidence that they are registered for E-Verify.
Nationwide, too, use of the system is growing. More than 124,500 employers have signed on to E-Verify, with about 1,000 new employers signing up each week.
By the end of June, federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to use it. While the Obama administration initially had delayed that requirement – first proposed by former President George W. Bush last year – it appears the administration is giving at least some support to E-Verify.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said in recent congressional hearings that she would like to see the system – which had been set to expire in March – in place for at least another year.
The system, which is run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in conjunction with the Social Security Administration and has a $100 million annual budget, works this way:
Participating employers enter an employee’s information – such as date of birth, Social Security number and proof of identity – into the program’s Web site to see if everything matches. Employers typically receive an instantaneous verification or a tentative nonverification. Those workers who eventually cannot be verified must be fired.
Amy Vitale, program coordinator at the ACLU in Rhode Island, contends the system is riddled with inaccurate information, citing an independent evaluation in 2007 that found that foreign-born workers received tentative nonverifications 10 percent of the time.
“It does put a certain amount of stigma on the employee,” Vitale said.
But USCIS spokesman David Santos said that 3.9 percent of all E-Verify inquiries result in nonverifications, and only 0.4 percent of those are proved to be errors.
Santos said the agency has recently established a toll-free number so employees who receive a nonverification notice can call USCIS to resolve citizenship errors. &#8226