E-Verify's Getting Better for Citizens, Worse for Immigrants, Asylees

"A government report released this week found that E-Verify, a federal program that checks whether someone can legally work in the U.S., is growing more accurate.  But not for immigrants.  The report, commissioned by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), showed that the program is doing a good job of telling citizens that they're eligible to work.  In 2005, 0.6 percent of citizens were incorrectly flagged as ineligible compared to 0.2 percent in 2010.  But for legal permanent residents and other immigrants who are authorized to work, the program is making more mistakes.  The error rate for non-citizens went from 1.5 percent in 2005 to 2 percent in 2010, according to the report.  Perhaps even more worrisome: the rate varied widely over the years in the study.  People who weren't citizens or legal permanent residents -- a group that would include asylees, for example -- saw annual error rates that ranged from 3 percent to 7 percent." - ABC News, July 26, 2013.

"If implemented without basic worker protections, a mandate that would require all employers in the U.S. to use an electronic employment eligibility verification system such as E-Verify will exacerbate workplace discrimination, according to a new report by the National Immigration Law Center.  NILC analysts who examined data from a recently released Westat report on E-Verify in the context of previously released studies of the program concluded that, if such a mandate were implemented without strict worker protections, hundreds of thousands of authorized workers might lose their jobs due to government error.  (The government-commissioned Westat report, which is dated July 2012, was not released to the public until July 2013.)" - NILC, Aug. 27, 2013.