GAO: $1 billion needed to expand employee verification system

Requiring employers to electronically check employees' eligibility to work in the United States would require more than $1 billion to expand and maintain a verification system over the next four years, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Comment on this article in The Forum.The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act required the Social Security Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was merged into the Homeland Security Department, to test a voluntary program for employers to electronically check if job applicants were eligible to work in the United States. Officials wanted to learn if the program, which in 2007 was renamed the Employment Eligibility Verification program, or E-Verify, could reduce the number of illegal immigrants who falsely claim U.S. citizenship when applying for work and reduce discrimination against citizens who may be suspected of being illegal immigrants.

The E-Verify program expires in November, but a bill introduced by Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., would make E-Verify permanent and mandatory for all employers to use.

Fewer than 1 percent of the 7.4 million U.S. employers, or about 61,000 businesses, were registered to use E-Verify as of April and only about half of those were active users, according to a report from DHS' Citizenship and Immigration Services unit. GAO cited the report in its testimony during a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Social Security.

Under E-Verify, within three days of a new employee starting work, his or her name and Social Security number are entered into an application on E-Verify's Web site. The system then checks that information against the name and number in SSA's database and, if necessary, against DHS databases, to determine whether the employee is eligible to work. Those that can't be confirmed earn so-called "tentative non-confirmations," meaning the employee typically has to show documents verifying U.S. citizenship. Results of the pilot program show that 8 percent of the queries are returned as being tentative non-confirmations.

"Multiply that out by the total number of employers, and there's the potential for serious capacity issues," said Richard Stana, director for homeland security and justice issues at GAO. "Additional computers and staff would be needed to make sure [DHS and SSA] can handle the queries that come to the offices, and promptly resolve tentative non-confirmations that are spit out."

Requiring all U.S. employers to use E-Verify would cost DHS about $765 million from fiscal 2009 through fiscal 2012 if employers checked the eligibility of only newly hired employees. The cost would increase to about $838 million over the same period if employers checked the eligibility of both newly hired and current employees. The agency projected that employers would submit an average of 63 million queries a year for newly hired employees under a mandatory E-Verify program, according to the report.

For SSA, a mandatory E-Verify program would cost about $281 million and require hiring 700 employees at the agency, the agency estimated. SSA would need extra funding to hire and train staff and to upgrade systems to handle what a spokesperson called the "onslaught of work."

Modifications to the E-Verify system could reduce the overall cost, however. This month, Citizenship and Immigration Services completed upgrades to the electronic verification process so that employees whose naturalized citizenship status cannot be confirmed by SSA will automatically be checked against DHS' databases before a tentative non-confirmation finding is issued.

"That took quite a bit programming and software changes, and will substantially cut down on the number of people asked to update records to show work eligibility," said Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at DHS. "This is typical of the way in which a system like this has to be made to work. Once you have it in place, you have to go looking for every way in which it can be improved and make those [enhancements] incrementally over time."

Nevertheless, some policymakers believe the cost to expand E-Verify would be cheaper than spending billions of dollars more on policing the borders. "Since comprehensive immigration reform is dormant, E-Verify is a way to neutralize the job magnet that draws millions of illegal aliens into the country, [which] may be more effective than pouring billions into border security," Stana said. "But if they're going to go with a mandatory E-Verify program, there are certain things that would have to be resolved before it could be successful."

Arizona began requiring all employers in the state to use E-Verify this year. Other states continue to debate the merits of the program.

The New Employee Verification Act, introduced this year, would scrap E-Verify for another employment verification system that leverages databases already being used for child support enforcement. The system would be administered by SSA.

But DHS' Baker is skeptical it would work as well as E-Verify. "SSA is set up to provide debt benefits and retirement for Americans on an actuary trust fund basis," he said. "DHS' job is to make sure the immigration laws of the United States are enforced. "There's a question of whether [immigration] is part of SSA's mission [and] whether they would focus on enforcement. . . . I'm worried about proposals that say throw it out and start over; that they'll start with a worse system and then have to figure out ways to make it work."