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.
