AZ State Senator Russell Pearce Tells Some Half Truths On E-Verify

The Supreme Courts decision to uphold Arizona's Legal Workers Act has set off a firestorm of speculation about how Congress and other states will react to this employment verification legislation. One thing is for certain, a new debate on immigration has shifted towards businesses who employ immigrants.

Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce recently held an interview with Neal Conan on NPR' S Face The Nation. Over the course of the the interview State Senator Pearce made some questionable claims about E-Verify, an employment verification system. One of the most egregious statements State Senator Pearce made was that the program was 99.7 percent accurate:

CONAN: What does an employer have to do to comply?

State Sen. PEARCE: Very simple: You're already required under the law to have your I-9s in your file. E-Verify was designed to benefit the employer, not punish the employer. It's free. It's Web-based. It's 99.7 percent accurate, and it's there to benefit employers.

It may very well be true that E-Verify is 99.7 percent accurate, but currently only a small percentage of businesses use the program. According to the National Councel of State Legislators:

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reports that as of December 11, 2010 more than 238,000 employers have registered with the program, with 16 million inquiries in FY2010. In FY2009, there were 8.7 million inquiries, in  FY 2008, 6.6 million, and 3.27 million in FY2007. There are an estimated 7 million employers in the United States and 60 million new hires per year. The 2007 Westat evaluation estimated that 4 percent of newly hired workers are verified using the system.

Bottom line a 99.7 % effective rate for 4% business compliance, a marginal portion of the workforce is not that great of a selling point. While we are at it lets see how E-Verify has helped businesses in Arizona, which it should be noted is undergoing  an incredible economic downturn. State Senator Pearce has sold E-Verify as businesses friendly and a job grower, lets check the facts. The National Immigration Law Center has a fact sheet here:

Although E-Verify has been called a “fast and free program,” small businesses in Arizona have reported that it is difficult to use.20 Unlike large firms, they do not have human resources departments

• For example, Mike Castillo, owner of PostalMax of Scottsdale, signed up for E-Verify in 2008. When he wanted to hire a part-time worker, a technical glitch made it difficult to file the paperwork with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). “If you don’t have the luxury of a human resources staff, or large workforces to compensate for lost productivity while employees resolve errors. The start-up cost associated with technology purchases is absorbed more easily in larger companies than in small “mom and pop” operations.  E-Verify takes time away from your core business,” said Castillo.

• Data compiled by Bloomberg Government show it would have cost the nation’s employers $2.7 billion using E-Verify had been mandatory in fiscal year 2010. Small businesses would have borne the burden for
$2.6 billion of that amount.

• In a survey of employers who currently do not use E-Verify, 25 percent of small employers said that they were not enrolled due to lack of resources and 10 percent said that they lacked a computer with an Internet connection or had a slow connection.23 Nationwide, small businesses are roughly two and a half times as likely as the largest businesses to report insufficient access to high-speed Internet.