Employee Verification Amendment Act of 2008

Floor Speech

EMPLOYEE VERIFICATION AMENDMENT ACT OF 2008

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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of H.R. 6633. This bill, negotiated by Members of both parties, will extend the basic pilot, otherwise known as the E-Verify program, for 5 years, while also ensuring that the Social Security Administration can continue to participate in the program without endangering its core mission of providing needed benefits to our seniors and the disabled. Without this bill, the authorization for the basic pilot program would expire this November.

H.R. 6633 also commissions two studies, which should help Congress evaluate the basic pilot program as it continues to work through the issues raised by the electronic employment eligibility verification systems. One of the studies seeks the causes, the remedies, and the effects of tentative non-confirmations of employment eligibility. Implicit in the concept of false negatives is the converse; false positives. We naturally contemplate that the GAO study will address the question of erroneous confirmations as well.

To understand the effectiveness of the basic pilot, we must not only know about U.S. workers falsely denied the authority to work, we must also know when it clears people who are not authorized to work.

This Congress has been very active on the issue of electronic employment verification. Several committees, including the Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees, have held no less than five hearings on the subject. The Judiciary Committee alone held three hearings over the past year on electronic employment verification.

In those hearings, we have learned that because the Department of Homeland Security relies on the Social Security Administration's databases and staff to query work authorization and fix erroneous records, the basic pilot program places significant burdens on the Social Security Administration. We don't want to jeopardize SSA's ability to carry out its core mission, which is to provide benefits to America's senior citizens and disabled Americans.

We confirmed that electronic employment verification systems pose complicated issues; issues with serious consequences for American workers who could lose their jobs and even their right to work if employment verification isn't done right.

We heard testimony in April, 2007, from the Service Employees International Union, in which we learned that, and I quote, ``Unless database errors are cured, 24,000 of the 300,000 estimated workers in each congressional district would be erroneously denied eligibility to work by basic pilot.'' That is 24,000 Americans and legal workers in each of our districts who could be stripped of their right to work because the government can't design a proper verification system.

An independent evaluation of the basic pilot program commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security and conducted by Westat identified numerous issues with how the basic pilot program works. The Westat report documented abuse and misuse of basic pilot by employers. For example, 22 percent of employers who responded to Westat's survey recorded that they restricted work assignments to employees contesting tentative non-confirmations. It also noted significant privacy concerns in the program.

In short, we have learned that there is much work still to be done and there are many questions left to be answered. Based on these findings, I do not believe that we can permanently reauthorize the basic pilot program or make it mandatory at this time. But as we continue to work comprehensively to reform our immigration system, we certainly should allow the basic pilot to continue as a voluntary program.

I would like to especially thank my colleagues, MIKE MCNULTY from New York; LAMAR SMITH from Texas; and SAM JOHNSON from Texas, for their tremendous efforts in working to negotiate this consensus bill to bring it to the floor today, as well as the author, Congresswoman Giffords, and the principal Republican cosponsor, Congressman Calvert, whose leadership is truly remarkable.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to reform our Nation's immigration laws and to improve the electronic employment verification process. We certainly hope that our efforts will be bipartisan. If all goes well to refine and improve this system going forward, it will not take the 5 years that is provided for in this act. But certainly none of us wants the current system to go away while we continue to work to improve and get an even better system.

I think that this bipartisan bill is necessary to pass. I urge my colleagues to support it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Ms. ZOE LOFGREN of California. Mr. Speaker, there are lies, darn lies and statistics. Isn't that the joke?

There have been a lot of figures thrown out here today. I think it is important to note that, according to the GAO, of the 7 million employers that are in the United States, less than 1 percent actually use E-Verify.

And the GAO also tells us, based on their analysis, that the SSA records contain errors about 4.1 percent of the time; 4.1 percent over 163 million workers is a lot of folks. So we have our work cut out for us.

I will note that there are 11 different bills that have been introduced by Members of this House with different ways and ideas on how to improve the employment verification system. We need to do an improvement of this system. I hope that that will be a bipartisan effort. But we are not going to get that done between now and November. And so it is important that we extend the existing program so that at least we have this in place.

I would note that Mr. Camarota and the Center for Immigration Studies is not the USCIS. That is sort of a think tank that wants to restrict immigration. It is an advocacy group.

But the real point is that you can track immigration, both legal and unauthorized, into the United States based on the exchange rate between the peso and the dollar. And as our economy weakens, you see less individuals either coming or staying. That doesn't mean that we don't need to get this system improved and that we don't need to have a comprehensive reform of our immigration laws and system, because what we have now is not working as well as it should be in the interests of our wonderful America.

I am happy to support this extension at this time. I have appreciated working with the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Smith, in getting this bipartisan consensus. I hope that we can get this through the Senate promptly.

And as I said in my opening statement, I have every expectation that the necessary improvements to the E-Verify system or the employment verification system will not take 5 years. Hopefully, that will be done well before the 5 years has expired, and that we will be pleased with the necessary improvement that we will craft together.

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