E-Verify Program Snares Citizens

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Electronic Dragnet for Undocumented Nets Citizens

April 8, 2008 09:07 AM (EST)
Roberto Lovato
The Huffington Post

Two hours after starting his new job at a food processing plant in 2006, Fernando Tinoco got fired. "I went to work, felt really good to have a new job and started going to it," says Tinoco, a 53-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Chicago. "And then they called me into the office and told me that my Social Security number was fake," he adds, "And then they fired me." Apparently, Tyson Foods Inc., Tinoco's former employer, was one of the more than 52,000 companies voluntarily participating in "E-Verify", a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program designed to identify undocumented workers by electronically verifying their employment eligibility.

After the Kafkaesque experience of being hired, fired and trying to maneuver through the famously overstretched bureaucracy of the Social Security Administration to re-confirm status, Citizen Tinoco has become an outspoken critic of U.S. immigration laws' impact on citizens. "I think that citizens need to be as careful of these new immigration laws," says Tinoco, who now works at a school, adding, "they can ruin our lives too." Tinoco found his concerns echoed by Jim Harper of the conservative Cato Institute, who recently wrote that "If E-Verify goes national, get used to hearing that Orwellian term: 'non-confirmation.'"

That is why E-Verify is opposed by an unlikely alliance that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, major unions, Republican legislators and others. But it is only one of a growing number of legislative and administrative immigration control initiatives that Tinoco and many critics believe will negatively impact not just non-citizens, but citizens as well. This week, for example, Congress is considering the Secure America through Verification and Enforcement (SAVE) Act, which includes provisions that mandate a national verification system like that of the more voluntary state programs like E-Verify. >>read full article

Posted in: DHS,E-Verify,No Match Letters,SAVE Act