Home > The Border Line > Archives > 2008 > May > 06 > Entry
Hearing on E-Verify, SAVE Act
Forcing companies to use a government system to verify the legal status of workers would cause thousands of citizens and legal residents to be initially rejected for work and cripple the Social Security Administration, critics told Congress Tuesday.
The system, known as E-Verify, is currently voluntary, but several proposals in Congress — including an immigration enforcement measure known as the SAVE Act — would make it mandatory.
John Trasvina, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said that the E-Verify system relies on faulty Social Security Administration (SSA) and Department of Homeland Security databases and would therefore create an official “no-work” list requiring millions of U.S. citizens and legal workers to bear the burden of proving their legal status.
“Forcing a deeply flawed system upon an unstable economy is not the answer,” he told the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security.
The panel’s chairman, Rep. Michael McNulty, D-N.Y., said he was concerned that SSA offices could be overwhelmed with a “massive new workload” as U.S. citizens and other authorized workers try to correct their information.
Rep. Heath Shuler, a North Carolina Democrat who authored the SAVE Act, said that targeting employers is the key to solving the problem of illegal immigration and that the system works.
E-Verify is free, easy-to-use, and allows participants to successfully match 93 percent of new hires to government databases in less than 5 seconds, Shuler said.
Of the remaining 7 percent, the vast majority do not contest the result, he added.
Shuler noted that every congressional staffer and employee of a federal agency has passed through the E-Verify system over the past decade.
“I have the utmost confidence in this program,” he said.
Comments
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By Brittanicus
May 6, 2008 11:18 PM | Link to this
If American citizens do not wake up and demand that the stupid Democrats sponsor the Federal SAVE ACT (H.R.4088), you will not be able to catch your breathe before either president enacts the next AMNESTY. Once the AMNESTY is Law, the 12 to 30 million illegal aliens, can freely tap into the whole range of welfare handouts. After that it will be a free-for-all, as millions more poverty stricken people’s will rush the border. Wave upon wave will come and no US Border Patrol, No National guard will be able to stop this flight of humanity. If the sorry war in Iraq is costing taxpayers billions; now near a trillion, how much is it going to cost overburdened taxpayers to subsidies the extended families of illegal foreign nationals?
By George
May 7, 2008 8:59 AM | Link to this
Why do we care what John Trasvina says? Why does what he think even make our papers?
By AndiMedi
May 7, 2008 1:40 PM | Link to this
The hearing was very interesting. First it showed what a poor reader Heath Shuler is. A bit embarrassing, perhaps one too many sacks.
Secondly, the pleading of Social Security experts to please not do this to SSA now, which is making progress to reduce the backlogs of dissability and senior citizen Social Securrity cases and is facing an astronomical increase in workload as the baby-boom retires.
I’m all for getting control of immigration and eliminating illegal immigration, but gutting SSA and expanding this flawed program are not the ways to do it.
By Brandon
May 7, 2008 1:57 PM | Link to this
ILLEGALS GO HOME!!!!
By L1M89
May 7, 2008 5:47 PM | Link to this
[‘I’m all for getting control of immigration and eliminating illegal immigration, but gutting SSA and expanding this flawed program are not the ways to do it.’]
Seems that you’ve been hoodwinked by anti-American pro-Illegal Alien lobbyists & globalists who’re all promoting economic slavery through the use of Illegal Aliens. A bit embarrassing, perhaps one too many sacks.