via: Heritage
HS Secretary Janet Napolitano is tentatively scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee about DHS immigration enforcement policies on May 6, 2009. Given Secretary Napolitano’s novel interpretations of federal law, the Heritage Foundation will be posting a serious of questions (and suggested answers) for the Secretary.
Questions for Napolitano # 2: Does the Obama Administration unequivocally support E-Verify and IMAGE?
E-Verify allows employers to confirm an employee’s ability to legally work in the United States. An employer enters information provided by a prospective employee (from the I-9 form) into an online portal. The system then compares that data to information in Social Security Administration (SSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) databases. It then issues either a confirmation or a non-confirmation. Non-confirmations can be resolved if an employee can later prove that there was a discrepancy in the system. If it is not resolved, a final non-confirmation is issued and the employer is not allowed to hire the worker.
E-Verify has been a success. More than 80,000 employers participate in E-Verify, and the system has confirmed the identity of over 5.3 million workers. The program has been a success because it helps employers enforce immigration laws in a cheap and user-friendly fashion. For example, the software is free and requires very basic information—information already found on the I-9. Knowing beforehand that an employee can legally work also minimizes the cost of having to hire new employees later. And with an error rate of fewer than 4 percent, employers can comfortably rely on the program.
IMAGE also is a voluntary program for companies that wish to verify that their employees can legally work in the United States. For a company to be IMAGE-certified, it must receive training from ICE on hiring procedures, detecting fraudulent documents, and using E-Verify. In addition, companies must also undergo an I-9 audit and check the legitimacy of existing employees’ Social Security numbers. The program currently has 27 full members.
Rather than continue the uncertainty of whether E-Verify will be a permanent tool of the federal government, the Obama Administration fully supports permanent authorization and funding the use of and expansion of E-Verify and equally supports the IMAGE program.
For more information on Heritage’s work on E-Verify please see Jena Baker McNeill and Matt Mayer’s Webmemo, Don’t Let E-Verify Perish in the Next Congress.
Also see Question 1: The Future of State and Local Immigration Enforcement
Posted by Questions for Secretary Napolitano: Real ID « Conservative Thoughts and Profundity on May 7, 2009 at 2:20 pm
[...] answers) for the Secretary. Past questions can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and [...]
Posted by Brittancus on April 24, 2009 at 11:30 am
Americans and legal residents need to stand behind anti-illegal immigrant heavy hitters like Duncan Hunter(R-CA) He drafted the law to construct the original border fence as a two-tier layers, with roadway between for vehicles, but as always underfunded or tabled in the Senate by anti-sovereignty legislators. Remember that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat of Arizona who took it upon herself, that E-Verify should be scrapped. There are few loyal American politicians, who draft decent pieces of legislation, but then must go against our corrupt Senate run by majority leader Harry Reid. He isn’t even loyal to the American workers in his state of Nevada, who are hurting by the downturn in construction.
E-Verify would have denied any hiring in the workplace of illegal labor, offering more opportunity to people with a legal status. He was directly responsible for killing E-Verify, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Durbin, Berris and 46 other Senators. The Democrats have already weakened the REAL ID Act, and trying to undermine ICE raids. Know who to remove from office when they are looking for your votes. Let them go and work for their friends at the ACLU, US Chamber of Commerce, the radical nuts and the special interest open-border lobby. E-Verify should be a permanent application and nobody should be exempt and should be automatic for every person on the payroll.
It’s a shame but even national health care, a single payer system for every American–will be dictated to by the greedy, putrid organisms called Insurance Companies who have bleeding our nation dry like blood sucking leeches forever.