Recently, I found out that our NC Rep. George Robinson voted against eVerify legislation in the North Carolina House. The bill still passed, and I was relieved.  When I discussed this with some others, I found out that eVerify isn’t the solution I thought it was.

My assumption of eVerify:

Employer checks a national database with an prospective employee’s name, birth date, and Social Security number to make sure there is a match.  A match would prove the employee has the right to work in the USA. Or…

If the perspective employee has a Green Card and/or other legal document giving them the right to work on the USA, the employer would enter legal name, date of birth, document type, and number. Done. Instantly giving the employer a match that is approved or rejected.

The painful reality of eVerify:

Employer inputs a bunch of information into the database and eventually a paper letter is generated and sent to the employer to pass along to the prospective employee with information regarding employment status. “What?” you ask.  So if the employer hires the new employee and 30 days passes, a letter may come back to the employer regarding the new employee (but not for the employer to read), that tells the employee if they are authorized to work in the USA.  If they are not authorized to work in the USA, there is information on appealing the authorization rejection.  The burden is on the employee and the employer to comply with the law. The employer however can’t hire an employee who is not authorized to work in the USA – which puts them in a tough position with the law when they don’t know if they are legally allowed to work in this country.  The employee just wants a job and is in no hurry to walk away, thereby has no problem accepting appeal requests or delaying the process with re-checks if they are rejected.

MY IDEA:

Make eVerify work instantaneously like a credit/debt card transaction where the customer is either approved or declined.  No judgement, the customer either re-runs the same card, produces a new card, or pays in cash. How hard could that actually be to make eVerify work like that? (Oh, right it’s the federal government. Nothing is common-sense.)

From personal experience, I know that State Board of Elections and Medicare.gov websites both verify this type of information instantaneously.

In my idea, the employer logs onto the federal website, enters prospective employee’s full legal name, date of birth, and social security number. Period.  With photo ID, the name, date, SS# match is either approved or rejected right then and there.  If approved, they get to work asap.

If rejected, the prospective employee can either double check the info and change it in a minor way to see if that resolves the mismatch issue. If they are not approved, and this is where reform is really necessary, the burden should only be on the perspective employee to straighten out the problem with the government and do all follow-up with the government, not the employer.

If the prospective employee has legal standing with employment authorization documents (EAD) to work, they would have no social security #, then a drop down box should be provided for choices of EAD: Green Card, fiancé visas,
“asylees, people with Temporary Protected Status, students who will be doing optional practical training or working off campus based on unforeseen economic need, spouses of J-2 exchange visitors, spouses of E-1/E-2 treaty traders and investors and L-1 intracompany transferees, applicants for suspension of deportation, people granted withholding of removal, and more.” [Http://www.alllaw.com]

There should be no fee for this service (that’s what our taxes pay for).  There should also be no database tracking of employers and employees.

My Conclusion:

Once again, the government has set up a system that has no common-sense and is an onerous burden on businesses, espeically small business. However, eVerify is the only system we have to verify whether people have legal standing to work in the United States and it should be used and reformed asap.

There must be a way to check whether people have the legal standing, or right, to work in the United States especially since we have such an illegal immigration problem. Those who are here legally should want the rule of law followed and probably want eVerify used in all hiring situations. I know I do.