Verifiably mistaken

[Jahness]

Verifiably mistaken


Error-prone employee database is unworkable and bogs down Social Security Administration

By Mike King
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


If you've divorced or changed your name recently, you'd better gird for battle with a computerized bureaucracy. The next time you apply for a job, it may assume you are an illegal immigrant.

Two years ago, the state Legislature proclaimed a crackdown on government contractors who hire undocumented workers. But the federal computer database used by Georgia and other states to enforce that crackdown isn't up to the task. The system, known as E-Verify, is error-prone, kicking out an alarming number of mismatches for U.S. citizens and foreign nationals who have permission to be in the country. Many are flagged in error because of name changes or change in marital status, and as many as 10 percent of job applicants may be affected.

In most states, use of E-Verify is voluntary. The database is administered by Social Security and the Department of Homeland Security to check the immigration and work status of job applicants; since it was created four years ago, just 61,000 of the nation's 7.5 million businesses have signed up for it.

You can't blame them —- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, unions and trade groups complain the system is a mess, and they've joined forces to stop legislation in Congress to make its use mandatory nationwide.

But under the 2006 Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, most companies with public contracts in this state are already required to use the system. Several local counties, including Cobb and Gwinnett, also have employee-verification rules for contractors.

There's nothing wrong with requiring employers to use a government database to verify job applicants' legal status. But E-Verify just isn't reliable enough to perform that task, and the Social Security Administration isn't the agency to handle it.

The checkerboard of state employee-verification rules is another result of Congress' abject failure to enact comprehensive immigration reform. That forced the issue onto state legislators, who saw employment-verification laws —- enforced through the E-Verify system —- as a quick solution.

Rather than spend the money to create a new database that works, the states browbeat the federal government to force the Social Security Administration to do something it was never meant to do —- become an immigration enforcement agency. And as it has scrambled to make quick fixes to E-Verify, Social Security has fallen behind on its real job, determining whether elderly and disabled Americans qualify for social services and benefits they have spent years supporting through payroll taxes.

The backlog for appeals in disability cases is now more than 500 days. If the administration is forced to spend $40 billion over the next 10 years to make E-Verify work, the basic services of Social Security will surely suffer even more.

At some point, the federal government —- not the states —- must accept responsibility to create a national system that works. That system will no doubt be tied into Social Security's database, but it must be accompanied by checks and balances to assure accuracy and protect workers who fall between the bureaucratic cracks.

And the system cannot be implemented in isolation. A truly comprehensive approach —- one that recognizes the nation's need for many of the illegal immigrants already here and clears them a pathway toward legal status —- remains the only real solution to the vexing problem.

—- Mike King, for the editorial board (mking@ajc.com)



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