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**Office of Government and International Affairs**

1156 Fifteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005

[www.ajc.org](http://www.ajc.org/) 202-785-4200 Fax: 202-785-4115 email:
<ogia@ajc.org>

August 11, 2008

Laurieann Duarte\
Regulatory Secretariat (VPR)\
General Services Administration\
Room 4035\
1800 F St.\
Washington, D.C. 20405

**Re: FAR DOCKET NO. 2008-0001; FAR CASE 2007-013- Federal Contractor
Mandatory Participation in Basic Pilot/E-Verify Employment Verification
System**

Dear Ms. Duarte:

On behalf of the American Jewish Committee ("AJC"), I am writing to
submit comments in response to the proposed regulations regarding Basic
Pilot/E-Verify proposed rule (hereinafter the "E-Verify Program"), which
were published by the Department of Justice in the Federal Register on
June 12, 2008. We share the concerns as to the growing challenge of
illegal immigration, undocumented workers, and identity fraud in the
United States which have led President Bush to issue an executive order
requiring the implementation of the E-Verify program and the General
Services Administration to promulgate the proposed rules. We submit
these comments, however, because the E-Verify program as currently
structured is, in our view, characterized by critical structural defects
which will only aggravate the challenges it was meant to address.

AJC recognizes that is in our national interest to uphold the rule of
law and enforce regulations intended to protect all Americans, including
immigrants to our country. Anything less will ultimately breed cynicism
and hostility toward the immigrant population generally. At the same
time, the means adopted to resolve these challenges must reflect a
humane immigration policy, dedicated to fairness, protection of civil
rights and civil liberties, and treatment of all people with dignity and
respect. Our commitment to ensuring that these basic rights are
guaranteed for all people is founded on the teachings of our faith,
which requires us to treat a stranger as one of our own, as well as our
historical experience as a community of immigrants.

**As presently constituted, the E-Verify program is a fatally flawed
system which relies on inaccurate records and will lead to wide-scale
misidentification of worker eligibility**. Reliance on the outdated and
inaccurate Department of Homeland Security and Social Security
Administration databases -- both of which are wrought with imprecise
dates of birth, spelling of names, visa status, and other information --
will lead to widespread "false negatives" for hundreds of thousands of
legal, documented workers. At minimum, the databases of eligible workers
must be effective and accurate to ensure fairness and safeguard against
the inevitable risks to civil liberties and civil rights. Absent this
reliability, hundreds of thousands of legal workers will be wrongfully
issued "tentative nonconfirmation" notices and denied jobs simply
because of data inputting error. Instead of smoothly transitioning into
the role of a contributing member of the American economy, these workers
will be forced to wrestle through the tangle of bureaucracy, imposing
hardship and emotional turmoil on them as well as requiring the
squandering of precious taxpayers' resources, simply to secure a job
that these workers were rightfully entitled to hold in the first
instance.

The Pilot system exposed glaring flaws when tested with only 52,000
voluntary participants. These defects will only be compounded, and
become even more deleterious, when over seven million employees and
200,000 federal contractors suddenly flood the system. The impact on
workers, their families, contractors, employers, and all Americans will
be immediate and dramatic, and will not be limited to those
participating in the E-Verify program. The additional strain on an
already overworked Social Security database and employees will
inevitably cause further delays for countless Americans who rely on its
monthly dispensations for their livelihood.

**The E-Verify program will cause discrimination and profiling against
applicants and employees.** The E-Verify program will foster
unwillingness among employers to hire workers who look or sound
"foreign," resulting in discrimination against lawfully present,
foreign-born workers. Employers will be aware of the paperwork and
administrative hassles of hiring a worker for whom they may receive a
"tentative nonconfirmation" report, and as a result some of these
employers will inevitably come to avoid interviewing and hiring
applicants with foreign sounding names. Thus, whatever benefit may be
derived from the system's preventing undocumented immigrants from being
hired, the proposed rule will result in a palpable and unacceptable
increase in employment discrimination against legal workers who do not
have traditional American names.

Moreover, the E-Verify program is ripe for employer abuse because it
does not contain a mechanism for preventing preemployment screening that
improperly accesses information, such as students' or patients'
immigration status. In order for the proposed database to be reliable as
a verification resource, it would necessarily include personal
information which could be accessible, without the affected person's
knowledge or consent, by government agencies, employers, and computer
hackers. The 2007 Westat evaluation of the proposed program found
"substantial" employer abuse. Westat reported that nearly half of all
employers participating in the Pilot program improperly ran workers'
information through the system before their first day of work.

**AJC believes that addressing the challenges of immigration and
employment of undocumented immigrants requires a comprehensive and
humane approach, not a piecemeal one.** In recent years, we have seen
"targeted" initiatives ranging from border fencing to English as the
national language to city and state efforts to root out illegal
immigration in local communities---and now a proposed expansion of the
E-Verify system---just to name a few. Each of the approaches shares a
common flaw in that they attempt to solve the multifaceted immigration
problem by attacking only one aspect of the challenge---often in a harsh
fashion that opens the door to discrimination---without adequately
addressing the demand for immigrant labor that will continue regardless
of these measures. The E-Verify program suffers from the same
dysfunction. While employer sanctions and a mandatory employment
document verification system may be an appropriate part of an effective
immigration reform package, standing alone they only exacerbate the
problems they are ostensibly designed to address.

Such a piecemeal approach has failed dramatically over the course of the
last twenty years. Despite numerous legislative measures aimed at
deportation, penalties, and enforcement, including a tripling of the
number of border patrol agents and a quintupling of the enforcement
budget in the last decade, millions of people continue to reside in the
United States without authorization. The E-Verify program is destined to
suffer the same fate because it ignores the reality that more than five
percent of America's workforce is composed of undocumented immigrants.
Without addressing the gap between demand for workers and the supply of
legal visas for these positions, as well as providing a pathway to
earned legalization by undocumented workers already in the United
States, the proposed rules today offer only a continuation of decades of
failed policy.

America's immigration system is clearing failing and in desperate need
of repair. As a society, we face numerous challenges related to
promoting security, protecting our economic interests, and maintaining
core American values. Throughout the country, anti-immigrant rhetoric is
on the rise and has led to tense and volatile situations. At the same
time, the demand for immigrant labor, the undersupply of work visas, and
the promise of the American dream continues to drive hundreds of
thousands of foreigners into the shadows of America's underground
economy. The E-Verify program will not resolve these issues, and more
likely will only worsen the situation.

In consideration of these problems, AJC urges the proposed rule be
withdrawn, and that the Administration, in partnership with the
Congress, instead devote attention to (1) mandating investment in a
modern, effective, and accurate document verification system; (2)
incorporating into any such system strong protections against
discrimination based on national origin; (3) including safeguards to
ensure employers cannot abuse the system and gain unchecked access to
workers' personal information, or illegally screen applicants or
new-hires prior to their first day on the job; and (4) tying such a more
accurate and nondiscriminatory E-Verify program to immigration reforms
that, among other things, address the demand for immigrant labor, the
undersupply of work visas, and provide a viable path to earned
citizenship.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions regarding these
comments. Your consideration of our views on this matter is greatly
appreciated.

Respectfully,

![](media/image2.png){width="2.875in" height="0.47291666666666665in"}

Richard T. Foltin

Legislative Director and Counsel

cc: The Hon. Michael Chertoff

The Hon. Carlos Gutierrez