Immigrant Screening

Washington Post staff writer Griff Witte was online to discuss a proposed new law that would make it mandatory for employers nationwide to use a federally-run computer system that automatically checks employees' status against government records. He addressed the issue in an article today.

A transcript follows.

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Griff Witte: Good afternoon, and thanks for joining me. For those who haven't yet had the chance to read my story this morning on employer verification, take a minute to do that now. For those who have, I'm looking forward to a lively discussion about a complex problem that's critical to the nationwide debate over immigration. Let the questions begin...

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Washington, DC: Great and informative article. However, it made me VERY pessimistic about the efficacy of this database, and its future success in identifing undocumented workers. Is this feeling wrong?

Griff Witte: It depends on who you ask. Officials at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (part of the Homeland Security department) feel very strongly that they can make this program work. They recognize that the pilot program has had flaws, but they say they're busy fixing them and that they ultimately will be able to create a fast, accurate system for determining which workers are legal and which are not. In particular, they say they're taking steps to cut down the amount of time between when immigrants enter the country and when their information is updated in the databases.

Critics say the government has had nearly a decade to get this program right, and the fact that it hasn't yet is a bad omen for what a mandatory, nationwide system might look like. They point out that even if the program has a very small error rate -- say, one or two percent -- there would be hundreds of thousands of people who encounter problems. These problems could range from a simple delay in being verified to the kind of situation I described today: The employer fires the employee because of concerns that the employee is here illegally. Employers aren't supposed to do that until they get the final word that an employee is ineligible to work, but that doesn't mean they won't.

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Greenville, SC: Do you think the Employment Verification process will be changed or altered when the Senate and House go into Committee meetings? What are the House and Senate objectives when it comes to Employment Verification?

Griff Witte: There's no doubt this program is going to be a major point of debate in conference. There's a significant chasm between what the House passed and what the Senate is now on the brink of passing. For starters, the House bill applies to all workers. The Senate bill generally only affects new hires. Under the Senate version, the program would take effect 18 months after the funding shows up. Under the House version, it's two years after the bill becomes law. The Senate bill also has a number of concessions to the program's main critics -- labor organizations, business groups and privacy advocates.

Overall, the House bill seems much more geared toward making sure that illegal immigrants are kept out of the workforce. The Senate version has that goal as well, but it doesn't take as hard a line. For instance, the Senate version will give workers the benefit of the doubt until the program hits a certain accuracy level. It also shields employers from liability in certain cases.

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East Chillum, Md.: Hello Griff,

I was glad to read in your story that

Employers would be forbidden from firing an employee until they receive a final notice confirming that the worker is ineligible.

Unfortunately, that safeguard kicks in only after the applicant has been hired. An employer could simply decide not to hire an immigrant who doesn't pass initial verification. Too much hassle.

And the employer wouldn't have to disclose his reason for not hiring the immigrant. "Sorry, Griff, you didn't get the job," is all you'd hear.

Griff Witte: Good question, but the program's leaders say they have the solution: Employers would only run an individual's name through the program after the person has been hired. In other words, this generally would not be used as a pre-hiring screen. It would be used to verify that the worker really is legal once the hiring decision has been made.

Business leaders say that's why they need the program to work quickly: If it's going to take days or even weeks to verify that a worker is legal, they don't want to be pouring money and time into training a worker who turns out to be ineligible to work.

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Washington, DC: Excellent article. What happens to employers who simply don't look up their employees in the database? Isn't there just as much opportunity to knowingly hire illegal immigrants as there was before?

Griff Witte: There are stiff penalties for employers who simply decide not to use the system. These include fines and, for repeat offenders who are found to be employing illegal workers, possible jail terms.

The question, of course, is how vigorously these rules would be enforced. Up until now, the government has done very little to crack down on employers who are hiring illegal workers or otherwise circumventing the paper-based I-9 system. Proponents of an expanded Basic Pilot say it will be much easier to detect those who are not complying since the whole system will be automated. But tough enforcement is obviously going to take more resources in the form of more people and more money spent tracking down employers who are skirting the rules.

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Riverside, CA: You mention that for every 100 queries, the initial verification gives back an immediate response 97-98 times. 97-98% accuracy sounds pretty good. What level of accuracy does the Senate bill require before taking away the protections for employers?

Griff Witte: The Senate bill wants the program to hit 99 percent success before workers stop receiving the benefit of the doubt and the burden of proof swings onto them.

You're right that 97 percent or 98 percent accuracy sounds pretty darn good. A pitcher who hits his target 97 percent of the time can start writing his speech for Cooperstown. A hitter who even makes contact 97 percent of the time is super-human. But with a database system that's essentially going to dictate who works and who doesn't, critics say those levels just aren't good enough. In a workforce of 140 million, even two or three percent is a large number.

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Greenville, SC: Based on your inside knowledge what is your best guess of what the final employment verification process will be (assuming a bill does get through the House and Senate)?

Griff Witte: I don't know that anyone has enough inside knowledge to predict that. This provision is a real wild card.

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Anonymous: To what extent could the database -- and the records of its usage, e.g., who has checked up on whom -- be used as a tool for more agressive domestic anti-terror initiatives?

Griff Witte: Well, that's the concern of groups like the ACLU. This obviously isn't the only massive government database that's been in the news lately. Privacy advocates fear that an expanded Basic Pilot potentially gives the government too much information in one place about who's working where, who's employing whom. The government insists that this program will only be used to verify worker eligibility, but given the news of the past few weeks, some have their doubts.

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Silver Spring, Maryland: It is pretty obvious to a lot of people that the Chamber of Commerce and the ACLU do not want this program. Would I be right in interpreting that to mean that they favor the continued availability to illegal immigrant workers? They may say that is not so but why would anyone be against verifying that a person is legally entitled to work in the US?

Griff Witte: You raise an interesting question. It's no secret that businesses all around the country, every day take advantage of the low-cost labor that immigrants (especially illegal ones) offer. Do businesses really want to see their access to the undocumented workforce completely cut off through a strictly enforced electronic verification program? Probably not.

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Bethesda, Maryland: Griff--

Good discussion. Given the likelihood that the database will contain many flaws, is there a provision in the proposed law that allows employers to use alternative methods of authorizing identity and work documents?

Also, which workers need to be checked under the system? If a worker shows a US passport or permanent resident card, does the employer need to run this person through the database as well?

Thank you.

Bethesda.

Griff Witte: The program would apply universally -- to all employers and all employees.

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Miami, FL: If a worker walked across the border, that means that they do not have any immigration record. Assume now that the worker uses a fraudulent SSN, how could the system verify identity theft? This verifcation system could very well threaten american citizens whose identities are stolen.

Griff Witte: As the GAO and others have pointed out, vulnerability to identity theft is a major weakness of this program. The advantage of this system is that your document numbers really do have to match a real name or else the computer will spit it back out. The disadvantage is that the name doesn't have to be yours if you're willing to try to cheat. That's why some members of Congress have called for a biometric-based card system that would link together things like fingerprints with a name and with a number. Under that sort of system, many feel it would be much tougher to steal someone else's identity. The downside is that it could be very expensive, and it tends to get the public's Big Brother anxieties going.

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Arlington, VA: Great. Another government data base, that no doubt will be underfunded and undermanned. USCIS has a VERY poor track record, as does the FBI. My wife is a LEGAL immigrant who has been waiting for a year for citizenship AFTER she passed her final interview and test. Why? Because the FBI doesn't seem to be able to complete a simple name check. There is plenty of rhetoric about all the illegal/undocumented workers, but nobody is paying any attention to the MILLIONS of legal immigrants who have been waiting literally for years for their cases to be processed. What is going to happen to them with yet another layer of bureaucracy and databases without fixing what has already been broken for years?

Griff Witte: I don't have the answer, but thanks for posting.

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Olney, MD: Your article said that the verification system would dissuade legal immigrants from applying for work. I don't see why anyone who is legally in the USA would be dissuaded from working just because of a verification system. Can you elaborate on the reasons that legal immigrants would, because of the new system, be dissuaded from applying for work?

Griff Witte: A couple of reasons. The main reason is illustrated by Fernando Tinoco's predicament. Here was a Mexican immigrant who had become a U.S. citizen 17 years ago. Yet when his name went through the verification check, it bounced back that the program could not immediately confirm him. The employer became suspicious and fired him, even though he had nothing to hide. Under the new law, that kind of an action by an employer would be prohibited. But labor groups say it's going to happen nonetheless, and that that will be a deterrent to applying for jobs.

The second reason is that an employer may decide it's too risky hiring workers who may be immigrants because they don't want to take the chance that they'll turn out to be illegal. So someone who "looks" like an immigrant or who has a foreign-sounding name may have more trouble getting the job in the first place.

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Washington, DC: Does it seem, given the significant problems with both the government database and the protocal for using it, that a variant of the current system will ever work? Or does it seem that we'll need to re-imagine an enforcement mechanism for our employment and labor laws? What other ideas have been proposed?

Griff Witte: That's the trouble. There aren't a huge number of options out there that are seen as better alternatives. The government could start from scratch and create a whole new system, but it would take a lot of time and money. This system has been in the works for a decade. If it doesn't fly, it could be a long, long time before the law against employing illegal immigrants actually gets enforced. And for those who are trying to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the U.S., that's very bad news. Many believe that no amount of border protection -- whether it's through fences, agents, technology, etc -- will solve the problem as long as the lure of jobs remains.

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Anonymous: Terrific work as usual. What are the potential social costs associated with this new system? If, hypothetically, the databases system not only worked but was aggressively enforced, what would happen to all the illegal immigrants in the country who suddenly couldn't get work? And how would that affect the nation as a whole, not just economically but socially and culturally?

Griff Witte: This is a bigger question than I can answer in one shot, but you raise an important point. Expanding the program is designed to discourage people who are not yet here from sneaking across the border. But it could also have the effect of leaving millions of people who are already here without a place to work. Of course, this is where things could get interesting with the so-called amnesty provision on the Senate side.

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Hood River, OR: If I understand you right, as an employer I would have to hire a person before running their information through the database, correct? As a farmer who hires lots of people on the first morning of harvest, my fruit will probably be off the tree and the worker paid before I know whether they are legal (if there's a question of their legality). If they are found to be illegal, I will pay them anyway, presumably....and, I guess I will have to invest in a laptop to take into the field with me to do all of this?

Griff Witte: This is one of the main objections that people raise. Many immigrants are doing short-term jobs where there's no time to wait around for verification. That's why the verification would have to happen quickly. But labor groups are also keen to make sure that it's accurate and that workers are protected.

As for the laptop in the field, you can save your money for something else: It's likely that you'll be able to verify your employees' status over the phone, in addition to being able to do it online.

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Griff Witte: Well, I have to get back to my day job -- reporting. But thanks to all for the great questions, and my apologies for not being able to get to all of them. I'm sure this is an issue that won't go away, so you'll have more chances...

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