There has been a lot of negative news about E-Verify since the program has been launched. Most recently, we told you that the program designed to weed out illegal workers was in fact missing 50% of all illegal workers because it couldn’t detect identity fraud.
But before you give up on the program, I think it is important to weight both sides of the equation. Check out DHS’ response. In our experience with the Electronic Employment Eligibility process, we find that while at times flawed greatly improves an organization’s ability to hire legal workers and comply with federal guidelines.
Recently, some media reports have used statistics that appear to call into question the effectiveness and accuracy of E-Verify. I’d like to set record straight. A report by the independent research firm Westat, using a sample from a three month period in 2008, concluded that E-Verify was accurate 96 percent of the time. Since then, the Obama administration has taken significant steps to further improve E-Verify.
Read the report for yourself here.
What else did this report tell us about E-Verify?
- 93.8 percent of workers screened by E-Verify were authorized for employment—and the system instantly and accurately confirmed more than 99 percent of these eligible workers.
- The remaining 6.2 percent were not eligible for employment. Out of this estimated 6.2 percent, approximately half were told they are work authorized when they were not—just 3.3 percent of the overall population screened by E-Verify.
To be clear, this means that only an estimated 3.3 percent of all workers screened by E-Verify were incorrectly told they were work authorized.
