E-Verify: Designed by a former Soviet bureaucrat

Background: A letter encouraged readers to contact their representatives and demand they implement the E-Verify system to stop illegal immigration. E-Verify is a government database that confirms whether an employee is authorized to be employed.

A recent letter encourages us to contact our elected officials and insist they adopt the federal E-Verify system for hiring workers. The stated goal of the system is to prevent illegal aliens from being employed. Unfortunately when we’re dealing with a government program, results rarely meet the goals.

Rather than take the necessary steps to reform immigration laws, Congress is attempting to push responsibility and cost for enforcing the laws to employers. State and local governments would call this an unfunded mandate.

In addition to sticking employers with the bill, E-Verify will harm innocent Americans and take us one step closer to Orwell’s vision. If E-Verify cannot confirm your eligibility, you get tagged as a "tentative non-confirmation". At that point, you have 8 days to report to the appropriate government office to get your papers reviewed. Failure to do so results in a new tag – "final non-confirmation" – and you are barred from working. Sounds like a former Soviet bureaucrat designed the system.

If you don’t think legal citizens and immigrants will get swept up in the search for illegal aliens, ask those who are hassled and prevented from boarding airplanes because their name wrongly appears on the government’s "No Fly List". These people are forced to jump through hoops to clear their name. So much for the bedrock principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Papers and government permission to work? In the land of the free?

[Letter to the Editor - The Farmington Press. Submitted 10/30/2009.]