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Marc Rosenblum: How we can change E-Verify for the better

A rare point of agreement among diverse factions in the immigration debate is that comprehensive reform must allow employers to distinguish between legal and unauthorized workers and so eliminate the "jobs magnet" that fosters illegal immigration.

Yet a recent analysis of the voluntary E-Verify system raises red flags about the timing and design of an expanded employment verification system. The research firm Westat, under contract with the Department of Homeland Security, found that E-Verify failed to catch 54 percent of unauthorized workers checked.

Expanded employment verification is necessary, but E-Verify – which was not designed to detect identity fraud – might not be the best platform to get there. And making E-Verify mandatory without broader immigration reform may do little to decrease illegal immigration, while harming some lawful workers and businesses.

To be successful, a verification screening system must be accurate: Illegal workers should be flagged and legal workers cleared. It must also be efficient: It should give employers a simple red-light/green-light response.

Notwithstanding significant improvements, E-Verify fails to meet these goals. It prevents the use of some fake IDs but remains vulnerable to identity fraud (use of another person's legitimate identity information). And E-Verify fails to reliably confirm legal workers.

Lawmakers, who soon may consider making E-Verify mandatory, should take two lessons from the Westat report.

First, E-Verify has serious design flaws that must be addressed before any expansion. E-Verify depends exclusively on employers to negotiate the verification process. Many employers find careful compliance to be burdensome, especially when the system cannot return an immediate confirmation (about 5 percent of cases), and it may take weeks to resolve a worker's authorization. Employers often assume these workers are illegal and fire or suspend them – but about one-fifth are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants. At this rate, roughly 600,000 lawful workers would be wrongfully non-confirmed each year under mandatory E-Verify.

The best way to avoid false confirmations and non-confirmations and to prevent employer misuse would be to replace today's employer-centric approach with an "employer-neutral" system.

The Migration Policy Institute, in a report last year, recommended that Congress authorize new measures to strengthen E-Verify while also creating voluntary pilot programs to test promising alternatives.

Under one model, a pre-verification system, workers would use a PIN number to "check in" with the system prior to accepting new employment, allowing them to correct database errors and guard their records against identity theft. Employers would submit the worker's verification receipt and would receive an immediate red-light/green-light response along with the worker's photograph.

The other two models would depend on more secure identity cards or a biometric scanning system requiring employers to capture fingerprints from workers. All three models – like E-Verify – have strengths and weaknesses, and all would be costly, which is why they should start as pilot programs and be thoroughly evaluated.

The second lesson courtesy of Westat is that employment verification is necessary but cannot fix our broken immigration system on its own. Mandatory E-Verify without broader immigration reform may produce more identity theft and off-the-books employment. With millions of unauthorized immigrants and businesses invested in existing labor markets, there are simply too many factors working against E-Verify for it to succeed without moving more employers and workers into the legal system. The risks of expanding too quickly are especially grave given the fragile state of the U.S. economy.

Effective employment eligibility screening will be the linchpin of any successful immigration reform, and it is essential that we create the conditions for it to succeed by finding the right model for verification and by linking enforcement to broader immigration reforms.

Mark Rosenblum is a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, nonpartisan D.C. think tank dedicated to analysis of U.S. and global immigration issues. His e-mail address is mrosenblum@migrationpolicy.org.