Pilot program to verify worker IDs gains support

More businesses participating in the feds’ online procedure, but critics say the program needs to be mandatory to have a major impact on illegal aliens.

By ELIZABETH LLORENTE The (Hackensack N.J.) Record

HACKENSACK, N.J. — In her former job in airport security, Lisa McKenzie had a ringside seat to the world of bogus identification. She was always encountering fake Social Security cards, drivers licenses, green cards and work-authorization papers.

“I was used to seeing people who would give phony documents all the time,” she said, adding that employers can do little unless they are “trained to tell real documents from the ones that aren’t real.”

So as human resources manager for NVC Logistics Group Inc., a logistics and transportation firm in Rockleigh, N.J., McKenzie was happy to participate in a federal pilot program that runs online employment authorization checks against Social Security and Homeland Security databases.

Immigration officials say that 10,000 companies nationwide are taking part. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services notes that participation has more than doubled since the fall, and that nearly 200 new employers sign up every month. All told, businesses have verified the identities of more than 1 million new hires since the program began in a few states in 1997. More than 80 percent of those whose data are run through the system are determined to be here legally, officials say.

Last week, President Bush vowed to crack down on employers who violate hiring and immigration laws. He called for the creation of a tamper-proof identification card for legal foreign workers. And he asked Congress to make the verification program mandatory, and to give the Homeland Security Department enforcement powers.

In touting the program, USCIS Director Emilio Gonzalez said in a written statement: “We’re protecting jobs for authorized U.S. workers.”

Most employers still rely on an inspection of work and immigration documents, although few can spot phony documents, because they have grown increasingly authentic-looking.

“I’m not an immigration officer,” said Judith Ayari of ComTec Inc. in Fairfield, N.J. “There are so many different classifications of immigration. There are people who are here legally on political asylum, other people on visas and other people in other categories. Then, people might be legal at one point, and their visa or other document expires. What do I do?

“I should not have to know everything about all that and have to spend hours on the telephone trying to figure these categories out and whether the person is eligible to work,” she said.

The pilot program is not without its critics and there have been glitches.

For instance, the verification system has wrongly flagged some workers who are here legally, but Homeland Security officials say such instances are rare and have been quickly corrected. Employers who are part of the pilot program say such kinks pale compared with the benefits.

Those who favor strict immigration enforcement say verification will do little to significantly reduce the hiring of illegal immigrants unless participation becomes mandatory.

Groups that push for tough immigration control have long charged that U.S. government policymakers cut corners on enforcement out of fear of alienating businesses that depend on illegal immigrant labor.

“It’s foolish to have it be voluntary because people who want to skirt the law don’t have to do this program,” said Ron Bass, the founder of United Patriots of America, based in Linden, N.J.