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May 14, 2009

E-Verify in the Senate Judiciary Committee (and Some Blog-Lobbying on It)

Monique Chartier

The Senate Judiciary will hear Senator Cote's e-verify bill this afternoon at the Rise of the Senate in Room 313.

Employment is the biggest draw to the United States. Legal immigration is a wonderful thing. But illegal employment encourages illegal immigration. A simple, highly accurate tool, E-Verify discourages illegal employment.

E-Verify passed the RI House yesterday For the sake of those who came here the right way, for the sake of the sovereignty of the country, for the sake of not creating an exploited, cheap labor force, I respectfully urge members of the Senate Judiciary to allow this bill to pass on to the Senate floor for due consideration and a vote.

Comments

I followed the link ("100,000 Employers Use E-Verify Program") there's nothing there on the accuracy of the system except the comment that:

USCIS has launched major enhancements since E-Verify’s inception to improve the accuracy of the system’s automatic confirmation processes, including verifying naturalized citizens directly with USCIS records.

Any database professional will tell you that the system accuracy (automated or not) can only be as good as the underlying data accuracy and that any large database of individuals is riddled with errors. In fact, the goverment's own studies of the SSA database and others confirm just that. No big deal if we're talking a database used for bulk mailing, but one used to deny employment? I'd like to see the proof.

What's so surprising is that the right, who normally claim the government will screw up anything, somehow think managing billions of personal records in disparate databases will be handled by the federal government better than the cababilities of any private company.

Posted by: Russ at May 14, 2009 11:02 AM

I use to do programming and have done some minor databases.

As Russ says, we had a saying of 'garbage in, garbage out'.

I just wonder if these illegal aliens advocates would approve of shutting down Medicaid, SSI, SSDI, retirement and other government programs because of the 'flaws' in the very same database that is used by the eVerify tool.

There's no secret science here. People like Metts, Levesque, Diaz, Paiva-Weed, Segal, Slater, Dennigan and others are here to protect their constituents desires which include violations of our immigration laws. They may not be all aboard that 'labor train', some I believe in my humble opinion, are here to destroy the United States.

Just watch a few YouTube videos of demonstrations in Californian. Within 30 minutes of watching, EVERYONE should be at the State House today questioning why this bill was moved to a moderate Labor Committee to stacked deck Judicial Committee.

Posted by: Roland at May 14, 2009 11:16 AM

Fifth paragraph of that link, Russ:

Currently, approximately 96.1 percent of qualified employees are cleared automatically by E-Verify, and 99.6 percent of all work-authorized employees are verified without receiving a tentative nonconfirmation or having to take any type of corrective action.

Posted by: Monique at May 14, 2009 11:52 AM

I was watching the hearing and apparently Sen.Blais is still on the committee,so I stand corrected.perhaps Sen.Raptakis is also-I didn't see their names mentioned on a list of committee members that I saw on a blog.
Shana Kurland was unbelievable.She obviously has no regard for borders or this country.She is a communist scumbag plain and simple and I would prefer many of the illegal aliens I had to arrest as Americans instead of her.
This woman once referred to ICE agents as terrorists.I think she is a subversive and an absolute ingrate when it comes to her non-appreciation of her native country.And this creep graduated Brown.Took the best education and turned around and crapped on her country.

Posted by: joe bernstein at May 14, 2009 8:22 PM

Joe, I was the guy who was sitting next to Shawna while she spewed her vile like a drunken Brown student.

I don't know if the cameras were panning the Senate committee members but they certainly were not paying attention to what was being said. Goodwin was on her cellphone texting while officiating, the others were either snacking or chatting amongst themselves and others were simply just getting up and leaving, returning 20 minutes later.

Their complete lack of interest for those given testimony was evident by their lack of attention.

By the time that commie Olneyville Neighborhood Assoc. Shawna was spewing her vile, I'd completely lost what I was going to say in a polite understandable manner. To the credit of Sen. Blais, he requested her testimony be stricken from the record.

Posted by: Roland at May 14, 2009 11:58 PM

I think that Russ brings out an interesting idea about how the conservatives who write here often question the power of the federal government in so many other areas, but give the EVerify program a pass. Roland brings up Social Security. That has been with us for decades and has helped many more than it has hurt. Also Roland, why would you want to have a citizen's free speech stricken from the record.
You conservatives are asking for the intrusive Government that you normally rail against. Why is that?

Posted by: Phil at May 15, 2009 6:51 AM

E-Verify does not reject stolen IDs. All this will do is result in illegals using stolen IDs as opposed to just fake ones. Or, since we all know a bunch of employers willingly hire them knowing they don't have permission to work, an employer will enter a legit ID into the system for the person.

Nothing will change because it is so easy to side step the system.

Why bother passing legislation that won't actually do what it is intended to? Because 99% of people don't have a clue how to deal with immigration in any practical sense, they just want feel-good laws. That's what you got in 86, that's what you're getting now. Useless, useless legislation.

Posted by: Mach at May 15, 2009 7:14 AM

Phil-I think striking Shana Kurland's testimony was a mistake-I think it is illustrative of a certain point of view held by "activists".I also believe that any testimony other than obscenities should remain in the record.
Mach-my experiences with identity theft offenders was that they seldom if ever used such a method to obtain legitimate employment-identity theft is most frequently employed to facilitate criminal activity.I don't think it's a major pitfall of using E-verify.

Posted by: joe bernstein at May 15, 2009 8:03 AM

Phil, I'll give the short answer. Everyone was asked to stay on point multiple times by the Judicial Committee.

Did you hear her or see her give her speech? She wasn't on point. They wanted people to talk about the bills on hand.

It's really no more simple than that.

Posted by: Roland at May 15, 2009 10:03 AM

I saw the paragraph that Monique sites, which of course says nothing of the accuracy only the degree of automation. In fact I have a system that will automatically verify 100% of employess (assuming you don't care if it's accurate), and I'll offer it at a fraction of the cost.

This is a common data quality problem. The info we'd need to judge the effectiveness of the matching algorithm would be the over-match rate (those falsely identified as authorized) and under-match rate (those falsely identified as unauthorized).

Here's the rub:

[Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington] did an analysis using the same Social Security database that E-Verify uses. The government acknowledges that the database has an error rate of 4.1. That means that about 17 million people's names may not be exactly correct or there was an error when the information, like date of birth, was entered. Though they are here legally, those residents would come back as "tentative non-confirmations."

"As a matter of simple math, that means that if E-Verify were to go national, on the first day 1 in 25 legal new hires would be bounced out of the system and asked to go down to the Social Security office and straighten out the problem," he says.

That raises Mr. Harper's broader concerns about the program – that it would encourage employers and workers to operate "under the table" and that it could prompt even more identity theft and document fraud. "Conservatives are supposed to want people to work – not on welfare, not working under the table," he says. "Here's a system where we really don't know what's happening with 5.3 percent, but it looks like more than 1 in 100 lawful employees are being sent packing." [my emphasis]

Let me get this straight, you folks on the right think the problem today is that American business needs more regulatory red tape?

Posted by: Russ at May 15, 2009 11:00 AM

Joe-

I recognize that, but it is probably due in part to the fact that they have not had to use a stolen ID to work because a cheaper false one worked just fine. I would imagine that more will use stolen ones if they have to do so in order to work. And sometimes people actually let others "borrow" their IDs willingly.

Posted by: Mach at May 15, 2009 2:59 PM

Russ,
"As a matter of simple math, that means that if E-Verify were to go national, on the first day 1 in 25 legal new hires would be bounced out of the system and asked to go down to the Social Security office and straighten out the problem," he says.

Wow, that means we get E-verif AND a system to improve the accuracy of the Social Security System. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Posted by: bobc at May 17, 2009 1:36 PM

Here's an example of how reliable these databases are:

Social Security Administration Says Upstate Man Was Dead

“He’s not dead, he’s sitting right beside me,“ said Ted Trueblood as he looked at his brother, Reamor Trueblood.

Ted is baffled that the Social Security Administration says his 57-year-old brother is dead.

“He’s not dead,“ he said “His wife passed away in December. Not Reamor.“

He says the SSA even sent condolence letters to him.

“We are sorry to learn of your recent loss,“ said Ted as he read the letter addressed to him from the SSA.

They also sent condolence letters to Reamor’s deceased wife, Julie.

Yes, that's right. Not only is he dead; he's also getting the condolence letters. So, no problem, just pop over to the Social Security office and clear things up, right? Ha, not so fast!

“I went and talked with Social Security about it and they saw what the problem was and they were supposed to correct the problem,“ said Ted.

Nearly 3 weeks later Ted says nothing was fixed.

“I wish they’d straighten it out,“ said Reamor.

So what's the recommendation? Contact your Congressman!

Remember any time you have problems with the Social Security Administration you should contact your Congressmen for help. They have staff members dedicated to addressing these issues.

So you guys think Kennedy and Langevin are now models of efficiency and their staffs are up to the task?

To bobc I'd add that data "clean-ups" are notoriously short-lived. In industry, I'd call it a fool's data quality strategy (no offense intended - in fact many busineses make this mistake). Quality guru, W. Edwards Deming, spoke to this when he said "Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality."

Posted by: Russ at May 19, 2009 4:56 PM

Fact!!
First, it is illegal to hire illegals.
Second, There is already a law for using fake documents.
So how can these people vote against E-verify Knowing that it is against the law to hire illegals anyway.

Posted by: RiverFox at May 20, 2009 8:45 AM

Why do all the nimrods who post at RiFuture feel the need to spew their B.S. and distorted facts on this blog, instead of saving their energy for the blog that would make the TASS News Agency so very proud?

Posted by: DJ at May 20, 2009 10:44 AM

I'm guessing the comment above is directed a me. No surprise that some on the right are uncomfortable discussing their own bias.

Since we're discussing qualifications, I have an engineering degree and 15 or so years experience in data quality and data warehousing. Yourself?

Posted by: Russ at May 20, 2009 2:54 PM