Fact of the Week: 5/22/08

Claims by the Department of Homeland Security that reports of E-Verify inaccuracies are overblown don’t stand up to scrutiny.  In a recent blog posting, The CATO Institute’s Jim Harper picks apart recent comments by DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy, Stewart Baker.  Below are excerpts from Mr. Harper’s column:

• “Baker says that critics claim the error rate in E-Verify is as high as 4% and will lead to millions of Americans losing their jobs by mistake. To refute this, he points to a study commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security showing that 94.2% of new hires in a sample of 1,000 E-Verify queries were automatically verified, 0.5% resolved a mismatch, and 5.3% received a final nonconfirmation (that is, they either didn’t try or couldn’t challenge the finding that they were ineligible for employment under U.S. immigration law).”
• “… Baker’s conclusion that the 5.3% of workers finally nonconfirmed are illegal workers is without support. The statistic just as easily could show that the 5.3% of law-abiding American-citizen workers are given tentative nonconfirmations, and they find it impossible to get them resolved. More likely, some were dismissed by employers, never informed that there was a problem with E-Verify; some didn’t have the paperwork, the time, or the skills to navigate the bureaucracy; and some were illegal workers who went in search of work elsewhere, including under the table.”
• “… And he concludes: ‘Of the thousand, 942 are instantly verified. Instant verification of legal workers surely can’t be an error.’ Of course it can! Any number of the 942 might have been illegal immigrants who submitted the name and Social Security Number of a legal worker to the employer.”