Unauthorized workers gaming E-Verify system, research says
March 9, 2010 by Christian SchappelPosted in: Employment law, In this week's e-newsletter - benefits, Pay and benefits
One research group has told the feds it believes their E-Verify program is failing to catch more than half of unauthorized hires.
Westat recently performed an evaluation of E-Verify for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and estimated that the program’s “inaccuracy rate for unauthorized workers” is about 54%.
That means one out of every two unauthorized workers is slipping past the system.
The reason? Many unauthorized workers commit identity fraud that E-Verify cannot detect, found Westat.
As a result, the DHS has stated that it’s working to improve the program by adding more databases and a photo-screening tool, and stepping up efforts to detect identity fraud.
However, while there are still problems that need to be worked out, E-Verify’s accuracy has improved.
Westat’s evaluation found that 96% of all workers were screened accurately — correctly identifying 93.1% of people as being allowed to work in the U.S. and 2.9% as unauthorized. Some 3.3% were unauthorized workers mistaken for authorized ones, and 0.7% were individuals who could work in the U.S. but where originally identified as unauthorized.
Tags: Department of Homeland Security, e-verify, Unauthorized workers, Westat
HRMorning.com delivers the latest HR news once a week to the inboxes of over 200,000 HR professionals.
Click here to sign up and start your FREE subscription to HRMorning!
follow us on Twitter
join our group on Facebook
March 9th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Ask you Employer to use E-verify…its take NO more time to use the E-Verify website as it does to make a copy of S.S card.
Any tool that can help reduce illegals from Getting hire and provide assurance to Unemployed Americans that there may be a job open for them and their families.
March 11th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
HernandeUSA – did you bother to READ this article?
March 12th, 2010 at 10:19 am
Mar -Did you?
A tool that can help better the odds by 50% is better then the near Zero % process we have now for identifying illegals.
What the article also fails to mention is that Any company that uses E-verify has to publically post signs that said companies actually checks their potential employee for legal status. Which can deter illegals from even trying to get hired, because illegals don’t want to get caught or work for a company that actually checks for legal status.