The flaws in the federal government's E-Verify system mean that any proposal to require its use is a bad idea. E-Verify already harms tens of thousands of employees each year, and the damage is felt disproportionately by immigrants who are entitled to work here — and who already face enough illegal discrimination.
This article by
TELG principal & general counsel Nicholas Woodfield was published by The Orlando Sentinel on November 28, 2014. The full article is available as a PDF on our site and at The Orlando Sentinel. (Site requires paid subscription.)
Excerpted from:
Flawed validation tool causes workplace havoc
Should E-Verify, the federal government’s electronic employment verification system, be mandatory for all employers? No, because E-Verify causes havoc in the workplace.
The most recent study of its errors, released in 2012, found that the database mistakenly returned a “tentative nonconfirmation” or TNC — which can be enough to force a new hire to resign — for 0.3 percent of all queries. More than 6 percent of its final nonconfirmations, a firm ground for firing, went to workers who actually were eligible to work.
To put this in concrete terms: In one year, before any national requirement, E-Verify unfairly gave employers a reason to fire almost 12,000 perfectly legitimate new hires.
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