and typically they must bring with them some sort of certified documentation such as a birth certificate under a mandatory verification system even if only some of these work in s s a field offices would pose a very substantial burden on s s a and one that is wholly unrelated to s s a for managing the social security and supplemental security income program after years of inadequate funding s s a is now struggling to bring down an unprecedented backlog of disability claims at a recent hearing before the full ways and means committee we heard heartbreaking stories of people who lost their homes their children topic then we'll hear frank assessment about the current system and the challenges from the government accountability office and as a manager to help our constituents day to day with security related concerns will provide us with a real life perspective on how a mandatory verification system would impact their ability to serve the public our former colleague in the congress and on this committee and employees who have had experience with using and finally will learn about the technological and security challenges of expanding from a voluntary pilot program involving sixty thousand businesses to a nationwide mandate affecting more than six million i hope our fact finding today will help the subcommittee and the congress better understand the challenges and consequences of making employment protect the security administration's primary mission and trust funds by authorizing employment verification only through appropriated funds needed offers an innovative and bipartisan approach to critical door to jobs for those who cross the border illegally is essential to securing our border naval make employers part of the solution to the problem of illegal immigration like it or not social security has the only database able to confirm citizenship for american citizens any meaningful immigration reform will impact the agency's operations it's time to start solving the problem of how to do e verification and stop back being asking if we need to do it the american people are tired of broken laws and broken promises committee has a had ten hearings in the past four years focusing on social security number verification as well as the issues time the congress gave the american people an employment verification system that works and protects the ability of social security to deliver service for all americans thank you mr chairman i thank the ranking member without objection opening statements by all members of the panel will be allowed to be submitted for the record and without further ado will go directly to our first panel which consists of four outstanding members of congress representative ken calvert representing the forty fourth district california representative dennis moore who will be weather shortly representing the third district of kansas representative gabrielle giffords representing the eighth district of arizona and representative he shuler represents the eleventh district of north carolina we will start with mr calvert would remind all members that their entire statements will be included for the record if they could summarize their remarks in approximately five minutes that would be great and then we can get to any questions of the panel may have represented  e ranking member johnson of the entire subcommittee for inviting me to testify on my bill h r one thousand which would require employers to conduct mandatory employment eligibility verification using the system before i came to congress i owned and operated several i was required by law to hire a legal workforce but there was no tool available to determine if the identifying documentation was fraudulent when i first began thinking about employment verification in one thousand nine hundred eighty six i wanted to create a system that would existing information and process at that time and still today every employee is required to fill out forms based on paper identification documents my solution was simple provide employers a way to check that a given name and a social security number match government records of work authorization today  sixty three thousand employers nationwide participating in the voluntary program in fact approximately thirteen thousand participating businesses are from states represented by the members of the subcommittee my bill h r nineteen would make verify mandatory of the millions of queries run through the computer based verify system ninety two point seven percent of employees are only verified individuals are result and only half of them point five percent are successful doing the job it was intended nine employment to people in united states not authorized to work i understand a small security sub committee's role is to safeguard the integrity of the social security system at this hearing people may criticize a four point one percent in accuracy rate of the s s a database some people may worry that if verify is made mandatory mandatory requirement over seven years and does not require retroactive employees additionally the verify program the national customer service call center would provide an alternative way of contacting non confirmation in addition to the traditional visit to the field office the s s a database is not perfect if employment verification is made mandatory individuals lawfully allowed to and from recent actions all the country from arizona to rhode island mandatory employment verification is quickly becoming a reality as members of congress responsible for controlling our borders and enforcing legal  last year over three hundred thousand undocumented immigrants were apprehended from october first to the current time period we're over one hundred eighty thousand people apprehended is a real issue that in my district by district also includes a large agricultural community large tourism community a large construction industry second fastest growing state the nation and as you all probably realize since january first of this year arizona is the first state in the nation which is known as illegal arizona workers act first imposes a business license penalty against any employer knowingly or intentionally hires unauthorized employees second it requires all employers in arizona to enroll in the federal government program formally known as the basic pilot program i believe that experience should be taken into consideration in this ongoing debate that we're having about  johnson for questions let me just make a brief statement as to where i am on this issue and i know all of my colleagues will feel the same way want to constituent comes into my office and asked me for help with regard to a federal issue one of the things i pride myself on is that i try to get an answer back to that constituent in a timely fashion in almost all cases i'm able to do that whether or not it's the answer they want they get an answer except with regard to a claim for social security disability i want to have to sit there and tell them that in my district they have to wait approximately five hundred and twelve days representative district it's six hundred sixty three and in the worst backlog area of the country atlanta georgia it's eight hundred forty nine this is an embarrassment i think it's a national disgrace and i'm proud that the members of this subcommittee in this committee have done something about it in the past year and a half when we came into last year we decided to get additional resources to the social security administration to deal with this problem we were successful in getting one hundred fifty million dollars above the president's request last year and with that money this year right now we are hiring an additional one hundred seventy five administrative law judges across the country to deal with this terrible terrible backlog in the house budget resolution this year we've gotten an additional two hundred forty million to hopefully further make progress on this backlog i just want to make sure that as we go forward we do not do anything that impedes that modest progress that we have made so far and that we can in fact accelerate that progress but i certainly don't want to get into any situation where we blow this progress to smithereens and start increasing the backlogs again so  that is my primary concern and i thank all of you for your very thoughtful testimony and as we move forward discussing immigration and the other issue i just want to make sure that whatever we do with regard to issues outside of know both fighting to stop illegal immigration through employment verification and we both believe that employers ought to be part of the solution i know however that you're talking sixty four thousand already has ninety percent of seven point four million employers as part of it so you're talking six million plus in the system that we're talking about which would start commissioner of social security in charge of employment verification and i know you're open to the administration primary control so there's plenty of common ground here for all of us to work together i think as we move forward and i appreciate your hard work but i think we need to employ what we can from what we know and do a better job of employer verification and i think as we debate and we've tried to work our way through what federal immigration policy ought to look like as we try to figure out if you put it mr schuller how do you reconcile our different something that's been annette's ransomware in this economy over the last two hundred some years we did some polling in my state and my state is alabama it is a pretty red state as things go redder than arizona rather than north carolina and we asked people in the statewide poll and we did pick between two options for dealing with immigration issue option a as we articulated was a maximum effort to apprehend and detect people who are here illegally maximum effort to find them and return them very aggressive hawkish hard lot approach if you will option b was a combination of things strengthen border security strengthen employment verification allow guest worker status for people who are here illegally but who dug into roots in the community and now been here for a period of time if i asked the average person to guess so voters and red state alabama came out on that survey you probably think what eighty percent favored round them up send them back twenty percent favored a guest worker the numbers were actually sixty one percent favored some kind of guest worker program thirty nine percent favor the more restive approach but here's the write off the pretty requisite for the alabamians who are willing to support a guest worker program was a stronger system of employer verification and stronger system of border enforcement so i hear the debate and i'm trying to fully appreciate the differences between how you verify works and mr johnson how your bill would work those are important and real i'll spend more time delving into those sanctions and i certainly respect the concern of some of my colleagues on this panel and in the congress who believe that we shouldn't act piecemeal on these issues i respect that i understand that i absolutely agree with the chairman's observations that we have one acceptable social security backlogs and we shouldn't and anyway tread lightly around the issue of giving more burdens to an agency is what it has but i would just make this i don't think we can get a political consensus in this country on what we like to call a comprehensive immigration reform with that out version of the measures that we're talking about here today so the differences between your proposed mr schuler and your approach ms go for it are real but i don't want those differences to obscure that fundamental point if we can get people in alabama to accept the idea of a guest worker program if there are certain conditions that are part of that i suspect we can build that kind of consensus nationally and that's the observation but i would make a thank you mcnulty sam johnson member of the social security subcommittee i'd like to commend your subcommittee's work in the hundred tenth congress i admire your work considering the overall efficiency of our country is one of our country's most important programs that social security  like to personally thank you for your efforts in addressing the massive social security disability backlog supporting increased funding levels for the administration and your help in halting a social security pilot program that would have closed field offices in my district in kansas and ranking member john like to commend your distinguished service to our country as well as well as the hard work in your staff put into drafting fifty five fifteen which is a very very important build a new employee verification act i'd also like to praise the fine work of two freshmen blue dogs testifying eight the save act this bill has garnered broad bipartisan support from over one hundred fifty members of the house and seeks to tackle one of the most daunting challenges facing the federal government today and that is illegal immigration i applaud congressman shores work on this difficult issue would also like to commend congresswoman giffords representing the district of arizona as a freshman she's also been very proactive taking on these issues and i understand i haven't seen or you haven't understand my good friend former congresswoman  connecticut has been invited to testify before the committee people who have the passion the wisdom and the fortitude to preserve protect social security issue to look forward to hearing her testimony i've heard from many constituents demanding the federal government do something to end to illegal immigration especially since the tragedy of september eleventh one with thousands of americans killed we have to regain control of our borders as a district attorney and for twelve years before i was elected to congress i understand that if we have lost none of those laws people disrespect those laws and our system has been broken for eighteen twenty years now and needs desperately to be fixed and i commend this committee and the people and this committee for working together on a bipartisan basis to make sure that happens here because i think it's very very important i support the inclusion of three billion dollars in emergency border security funding the fiscal year zero eight on the bus funding bill those funds are helping our border patrol agents today regain operational control of our borders but that's not enough we know that a lot of immigrants who come most immigrants who come to this country come here for a better life for themselves and their families but they do it legally i think we all support that what we have a concern about is people coming here and not following the law not only sh country secure our borders but part of our immigration enforcement should include verifying who is and who isn't authorized to legally work in our country i'm very proud of the new employee verification act or need a bill sponsored by ranking member  giffords and over twenty five other members is very important to some of the gaps here and improve employment verification system that enables employers to effectively identify unauthorized workers and allows americans protect their identity would help prevent identity theft and illegal employment neva would create a voluntary biometrics option that employers could choose to use in the verification process when it comes to work site enforcement i believe the federal government needs to work with the business community to develop sound reasonable association of manufacturers another business group it's also important to note that business is currently facing a confusing patchwork of state and local immigration laws despite the fact that the constitution gives jurisdiction of immigration matters to the federal government we should only ask american businesses to comply with one clear and do understand employment eligibility verification federal law neva would preempt any state law with regard to employer fines sanctions for federal immigration law violations or with verifying work status and authorization filing neva would take steps to protect the mission associated ministration responsibilities it already maintains most experts agree that no matter how mandatory employment verification is implemented social security administration will play an important part on the identity database it maintains in order violate and inclusion order for congress to address one of the most challenging issues we face that being illegal immigration we need to tone down the rhetoric and begin to work together democrats and republicans to offer meaningful solutions like neva to address this difficult issue thank you mr chairman we will not resume the questioning with mr brady thank you chairman for holding a hearing i can agree more with mr calvert who's on this issue for many years there is no perfect solution but if we pull pull years together and make them part of the solution to stop this job magnet we will be better off support mr schuler's say bag believe that there is a immediate need to close the back door of the illegal immigration so we can keep open the front door of illegal immigration we need to make improvements in those areas and join with mr moore and earlier today in support of same job save act a couple thoughts the issue of immigration and illegal immigration in this country i think we need to find a solution that is that is focused on the marketplace today morning in the eastern chronicle front page story about how crack downs in other states and in texas on workforce verification i have created a swamping fake documents that today as one said they could put all the police department full time on this thing they  fifty dollars you can buy the higher quality products including reese's for as much as fifteen thousand dollars which is a case in some of those dealing in human trafficking and prostitution fact matter is the marketplace place moving much faster than government is in employing in fake documents our solution has to be flexible enough to not only keep up but but anticipate and respond to those efforts to  fraudulent create a way around worker verification i think what's important mr chairman about mr johnson's bill is this committee ultimately will shape what type of system we want as mr ryan has said wisconsin we are determining the architecture of workforce verification and we have a choice between the big brother path that leads to one national database that will be in my view quickly certainly compromising corrupted over time no question or we can find a more flexible i would say smart brother approach where we use a decentralized system that can quickly verify that ninety percent of employees and truthfully are fairly easily verifiable to ten percent we have put the resources to and that's where i think we find a solution that doesn't swamp social security ministration far from homeland security for example mr johnson's buil provides an alternative secure alectryon and verification system that basically relies upon network certified companies employer verification when you and i leave this hearing today google employer  ication you'll have a choice about twenty companies that can quickly provide you the service to identify your employer some of them have device can do it right on the bottom line is they ask personal identifier questions such as  for address tell me which one you have previously not live that they use a number of identifiers that quickly are able to identify workers we need to have a system that doesn't swamp our national or federal government that doesn't lead to a national id card or a database that will not be reliable so mr chairman i guess my point is that this committee needs to to make sure we don't create a tractate player solution in gentleman mr doggett name choir like mr chairman and thanks to each of our witnesses i guess i want to begin with mr morris concluding comment that we need to work together and dog director mark west all the members of the panel with regard to exactly who we are working together with well most of the discussion of where the bush administration is on these immigration matters is focused on what happened in the senate last year it was not so very long ago that the attitude of the bush administration concerning immigration generally was not unlike its response most problems our country faces what me worry approach in two thousand and four this congress on a bipartisan basis think almost every one of my republican colleagues from texas signed a letter appealing to the president expressing concern about his policies and how they affected our border patrol so i guess it is against that backdrop proposals i would answer that question to say that the bush administration supports and president clinton signed the basic pilot program into law when i originally introduced legislation back in one thousand nine hundred sixty and that program has expanded as a system where we have to think forward what it is that we're setting up and it's something that can endure with time to come and it is something that we want our citizens to be a part of and so i want to thank both republicans and democrats on the panel here today for coming obviously this requires bipartisan support to get through i think that the navy system is probably more intelligently designed is the way to go and i think from this subcommittee standpoint we have to be a little concerned about some of the burns reporting on for instance it's my understanding of the save act that if you have more than one job under this bill you have to go with your pay stubs to those local so security office to prove that identity that hasn't occurred and could you imagine you know what kind of a swamp would occur with all the people going to local s s a offices with their pay stubs to prove it so i think this issue requires more work this is a hearing that we need to have more of these we've already had i think ten over the last couple of years but as we look gentleman thank you very much let me before i begin any comments and questions to our panelists just say to you and to the ranking member thank you very much for your interests and concerns in trying to address these issues we obviously need champions for  to what we need to do with with regard to the security ministration the benefits that people have paid into the system or going to take out to all my colleagues thank you for the work that you're doing thank you for your testimony today i think it's obviously very important that we have a hearing like this so we can make further progress in discussing how we move forward and break the cycle of allowing our broken immigration system to continue forward the two concerns that i have and i think they've been expressed and i think all of us have tried to noodle this a bit is to try to figure out how we come up with the dollars to make a system like this work i don't think anyone either in the panel or here in the days believes  without providing the s s a with the money it takes to do that given that it has an obligation we just had for over seventy years to try to provide the services that people have been paying week in week out of their paychecks for so i think the most important thing to recognize that we've got to come up with money i don't think there's any question that we want to go toward a system where we can verify who is in this country who's eligible to work and i would hope that we would get to the point of being able to do that in a way that is not discriminatory but also paid for and i don't think anyone including and this is where again the chairman of the ranking members important anyone in this committee is interested in implementing a program which sets further behind the source code ministration for meeting its current obligations to those beneficiaries who paid into the system either to get the retirement benefits or unfortunate for many to get their disability benefits and when all of us here have people in our districts who've been waiting years to get their disability benefits it would be outrageous for us to talk to start talking about how we're going to implement new programs on the on the backs of the social security missed ration without doing something serious to provide the resources to make it done states complain about unfunded mandate  s s a should complain even more vociferously about any kind of unfunded mandate that might come when we try to tackle an issue that s s a had no role in creating the broken immigration system secondly i think for many of us my father can still tell me the stories when he would walk by a restaurant as a young boy and the sign outside the restaurant next to the menu would read no dogs or mexicans allowed none of us wants to see this system turn into a a new jim crow system of apartheid where you in essence create those who get to work in this country not only because they're qualified but because they happen to have the right name or the right appearance and every time we talk about these air raids the so obscure ministration acknowledges and it's just because it wasn't made to be a verification system for the nation of four or five percent you're talking millions of americans citizens million probably among them many others who are about to become u s citizens but have every right to be in this country would be impacted now for some people that might not be a problem for me it is and so i think quite honestly everyone in this panel down the line probably has that same concern because we don't want to come up with a system that diminishes someone's rights to try to elevate the nation's rights and so i would say this i think this is an important hearing to hold but this is what happens when you try to have a solution to a broken immigration system we need to do more than just talk about verification we need to do more than just talk about imports and at the border we need to do more than just talk about how we somehow allowed ten to twelve million people to come into this country  without the authorization to do so mr moore made a comment earlier in his testimony about how we want to make sure that we don't let people come into this country who don't have the right to be here and to work i also hope that will always emphasize the fact that that person is tangling in this country was someone who allowed them to work someone who hired them to work and so the illegality to the degree that you want to talk about in terms of illegality and i hate to use that term for what most of us would call the american dream of trying to work hard and keep up the work ethic but for those who don't have the authorization to work so we did have the authorization to give them that work and so we should be sure that we are using a system which would include a verification system make sure that we deal with this in a way that is comprehensive not just piecemeal but i do want to say to all of you thank you for your efforts i've had many conversations with each of you i know congress issue and i have an extensive conversation about this how to address this and i want to thank all of your thoughtful attention to this issue and mr chairman to you and the ranking member thank you very much for your vigilance of protecting the social security beneficiaries who have paid into the system we thank the gentleman mr johnson and i wish to welcome a member of the full committee mr crowley who may require at this time  we are under some time constraints as the witnesses make their way to the hearing table i will remind each and every one of them that your written statements will appear in the record in their entirety we're asking you to keep your oral statements to about five minutes and i also want to at this time ask unanimous consent to include in the record several letters from groups that were not able to make it here today including the national committee to preserve social security and medicare we will  be hearing from and also from a coalition of local and national community service organizations without objection so  d behalf of ranking member johnson and all of the other members of the subcommittee i want to welcome the second panel i thank them for the sacrifice they made in getting here  today we will hear from mr mr richard stana director of homeland security and just the government accountability office the honorable barbara conelly president and chief executive officer of the national committee to preserve social security and medicare greg heineman president of the national council of social security management associations incorporated of norfolk nebraska mitchell lair the president of  enterprises phoenix arizona on behalf of the u s chamber of commerce mr john president and general counsel mexican american legal defense  education fund los angeles california dr eugene spofford press professor of computer science director of the center for education and research and information assurance and security  purdue university west lafayette indiana on behalf of the association for computing machinery and ms susan our messenger president chief executive officer of the society for human resource management alexandria virginia on behalf of the initiative for a legal workforce thank you wall we will begin with mr stanhope thank you chairman mr johnson for the opportunity to participate in today's hearing on the program as we and others have reported in the past the opportunity for employment magnet attracting illegal aliens to the united states in one pass the immigration reform and control act established an employer verification process for employers to verify all newly hired employees work eligibility and a sanctions program for finding employers who cannot comply with the availability of counterfeit documents and the fraudulent use of valid documents belonging to others have made it difficult for employers who want to comply with the current employment verification process to ensure that they hire only authorized workers counterfeit documents have also made it easier for employers who don't want to comply to knowingly hire an authorized workers without fear of sanctions over the years immigration experts have said that the single most important step that could be taken to manage lawful immigration and reduce unlawful immigration needed to be addressed before it is expanded to all employers and is effectively implemented as envisioned in various immigration reform proposals first program capacity would need to be expanded  year under a mandatory program u s estimated that a mandatory program could cost a total of about seven hundred sixty five million dollars for fiscal year zero nine through twelve if only newly hired employees are checked with a program in about one hundred thirty eight million dollars both new and current employees are checked in that time u s has also stated that it would need to increase its staffing levels for a mandatory program but has  not yet developed an estimate s s a estimated that implementation of a mandatory program would cost about two hundred eighty one million dollars and require hiring seven hundred new employees for a total of two thousand three hundred twenty five work document with the photograph stored in databases u s exploring options for expanding this tool to include other forms of documentation with related databases store photographic information such as passports and driver's licenses aware the social security administration is already facing several significant challenges primarily as a result of years of funding that has been insufficient to keep up with the workload chief among these challenges a disability claims crisis according to the congressional budget office the cost of social security of one of the leading immigration proposals would be one billion dollars an amount equal to nearly ten percent of the agency's administrative budget moreover experts have included that the  funds needed to handle a massive immigration workload the annual competition for limited budget resources already challenges our ability to provide the levels of funding necessary for the current mission requirements after much effort by didn't ever get to be chairman of the subcommittee of social security but i sat with congressman johnson and mr bunting and i know that i know the system when i set up there but the last ten years i have given my life to social legislation at the wrong time and i very serious about not having this happen at this time because i think we could take an agency that is struggling and i thank you for the hundred fifty million dollars you gave last year and the two hundred forty million in nollie congressman johnson members of the subcommittee my name is greg heineman and i represent the national council of social security management associations and i'm pleased to submit testimony social security field offices based  challenges due to years of underfunding of there has been a straight of budget challenges include that fifty one percent of the callers to a field office receive a busy signal reduction a program integrity activities costing tax payers billions of dollars the elimination of nineteen field offices since two thousand and six seven hundred fifty six thousand disability cases are pending and backlog applicants are waiting an average of five hundred seventeen days for a decision we've been given additional responsibilities under the medicare modernization act and the expansion of workloads to the retirement eligibility of eight million baby boomers those challenges any expansion of social security role in employment verification needs to be very carefully considered as it could create a much greater problem for social security when the social security act was  enacted social security numbers were established that workers with the earnings which would entitle them to benefits the social security number is not now nor was it ever meant to be a national identifier use of the social security card to assist in the terminating employment eligibility united states was authorized nine hundred eighty six the electronic verification system is used once a hiring commitment is made to check the employment eligibility on s and s s a records if information on either record is discrepancy the employer receives a tentative non confirmation notice this notice gives the employee eight days to contact the h s or s s a to correct the discrepancy employee verification conducted by social security is based on information from the agency's numidia records which are provided to social security when the s s and is issued social security testif expansion of the verify would result in three point six million additional visitors coming into our office this is a seven percent increase in visitors which are top says that are already stressed such visitor traffic w increase would mean that social security would need nearly nine hundred additional positions at a cost nearly one hundred million dollars a year there are significant problems in relying on employment verification first employees learn about the reasons for receiving a tentative non confirmation notice when they report to a social security field office with their letter the problem could be related to any of several reasons including employer input air if the employer does not provide correct documentation to fix the problem a replacement document may be needed sometimes delaying the process by weeks or months this could cause the employee to make many trips to the office to resolve the problem some employers opt for second identifying undocumented workers in american business in two thousand and six meatpacking plants operated by swift and company were raided over twelve hundred employees were detained on immigration violations even though swift used basic pilot as prescribed by v h s secretary chertoff was quoted after the raid that basic pilot was not a magic bullet every kind of problem additional cut proposals before congress would expand to use to be verified to of all employees this provision could increase visitors to our office by twenty five percent another proposal would require anyone who receives more than one earnings record in a year to verify their identity with  and provide proof of their earnings currently about forty five million people receive more than one w two form a year almost all are u s citizens or legal aliens eligible to work these provisions would require employees to visit our offices at a rate which would double the number of our visitors we urge the committee to think about the impact of these provisions on our ability to provide course services to your constituents that they need and they deserve we submit that at this critical time  s s a now is not the time to add another workload for already overtaxed employees and systems i thank you for the opportunity to address this committee and be happy to answer questions at the appropriate time thank you very much m sixth with authorization positive and we are allowed to hire those people fourteen percent of them come back with some indication other than employment authorized and those are the ones that take a substantial amount of citizen there are substantial employment shortages in arizona in our business all of our restaurants are looking for more workers they were before january first they are now so we would hope that any immigration reform would include some kind of a comprehensive system that would allow guest workers to meet the labor demand in certain industries that drives illegal immigration and we would urge a comprehensive system that would do at least four things single federal system that would preclude state and immigration affects every family business and community across the nation immigration policy enforcement practices are uppermost in all this litigation and policy agendas as they affect both newcomers and native born latinos work site enforcement is a necessary component of comprehensive immigration reform but it must be done with accurate records about a process the notion that we can simply cheaply or easily turn over verification to computers adequately managing or safeguarding the data we consult the effectiveness of the verification system and jeopardizes the mission of the social security administration relied upon by all americans moreover excluding millions of existing workers from the workforce will further shape the economy legalizing the status of vital members of the workforce must increase verification or be done simultaneously mandatory adversely affect american workers at an economically fragile time according to the cato institute a mandatory e v a s result in eleven thousand workers per day or just twenty five just over twenty five people working rational just per working day who would receive a tentative non confirmation throughout a given year it is a bedrock principle of employer rights in this country to be free from discrimination based on race color religion sex national origin or citizenship status but e e v s database burden foreign born u s citizens almost one hundred times as frequently as native born citizens in december of last year able to check o arizona naturalized u s citizen last job as a truck driver in a troubled economy he applied with a different company but no one called him back finally found work but his new employer notified him that it received a tentative non confirmation o employment eligibility by the time mr chacko cleared up what was in essence a database error by presenting his citizenship certificate at his local s s a office a few weeks ago that an income had forces family into financial trouble juan carlos also naturalized u s citizen from arizona a car salesman quit his job at the end of last year took another job two months later unfortunately for a father of two days after starting his new job as employer informed him that he verify classified him as a possible illegal immigrant having only days to convince as i say that he was a u s citizen he took his u s passport social security card driver license arizona voter id card to the s s a office he was then informed he would have to request new paperwork from the department of homeland security which may make ten months which may take ten months one hundred eighty six when congress adopted employer sanctions and authorized workers from being hired while they predicted that document fraud would render sanctions in effect if we were correct of documents will similarly undermine the system contemplated by the pending legislation the unintended beneficiaries are unscrupulous employers they will continue to employ and authorize war knowing they are more susceptible than ever before so exploitation and intimidation and they are effectively bereft of labor organizing rights or the ability to complain about illegally dangerous work site conditions they're authorized coworkers and companies unfair competition of unscrupulous employers are also harmed in this situation mandatory without protection for workers as asters proposition currently the office of special counsel for immigration related unfair employment practices does not have the after i was confirmed by the senate for a four year term as special counsel for immigration related unfair employment practices ins officials took me to chicago to observe newly trained employers using one of the basic pilot systems as you know it sees the federal government's only office devoted solely to immigrant workplace rights he has a dual role of educating employers about their responsibilities under not to discriminate against qualified u s workers and enforcing the anti discrimination provisions h recently trained employer  promised as i visited but i got it wrong in different but critical ways the application of the computer verification system failed to follow the training or the law one employer use it only for foreign born workers another employer failed to tell employees or receive a tentative non confirmation that they could address discrepancies with s s a or ins the third employer told us that they used it only for those employees who needed it why and why and how he made that determination the employer stated that it was for employees who had an accent or looked illegal so having seen it in real life i am less confident than mr calvert earlier that all employees who do not contest tentative non confirmation are in fact are in fact unauthorized while the strongly supports fixing this nation's broken immigration system but drastically expanding electronic verification without first improving the underlying data strengthening protections for u s workers ensuring it will be used as intended and providing a supply of legally authorized workers runs the economy harms our communities and w for a c m which is the largest oldest professional organization for people working in computing and as i know personally on my qualifications i've been working in computing for thirty years  including working as an advisor for the air force the f b i the national security agency and others so i'm well familiar with large governor systems we have no particular position on whether or not such a system as a system should be implemented but we do have a number of concerns in the area of security and privacy and timeliness of results and technical feasibility and i'll just touch on a few of these there are more and written testimony  first any system that's employed needs to have strong requirements and for security privacy and you must allocate sufficient resources to audit those we've seen the news reports for instance of individuals at hospitals in california who are snooping on records if we extend a system that goes nationally to employers we open it up to a number of different kinds of privacy violations and certainly if employers are required to use this system there will be u nscrupulous individuals who are using it to find valid identities that they can use for falsifying information for employment so we need to have resources in place not only to protect the system but to do appropriate auditing and remediation second you already heard something about the increase in workload there needs to be consideration given that workload does not scale simply in the number of new cases of the number of parties because you also have to provide storage you have to provide communications you have to provide waiting and you have to provide access in particular in locations where employees may not have ready access to a social security office they're going to need access to be able to resolve  problems i would remind the committee for instance of the backlog created when we had new rules on requiring use of passports to travel to canada mexico and the caribbean about the terrible backlog that occurred even with an increase in the number of personnel who were assigned to that third as i mentioned the issue of scale is very significant and in particular the pilot program does not represent all states and all kinds of businesses when we increase this to all employers they will be different kinds of employers particularly a large number of domestic employers and those in remote locations agricultural locations and the like will have different needs or being able to access the system for one of the proposed pieces of legislation described the use of biometrics as i would tell the committee that you may hear differently from vendors of biometrics but from those of us who study it is not a mature technology it does not cover everyone it ha faults and many biometrics do not work well over time particularly as the population ages so that is a technology shouldn't be specified in any solution and then last of all i'm working with a  number of different computing systems over time i can tell you that the majority of problems occur in the special cases at the extremes and these are the places that you as a committee as lawmakers should be concerned because if we mandate a system it is those extremes that may look like numbers but are really people one example of an extreme is under extreme operational conditions imagine a hurricane katrina or a large earthquake in a major metropolitan area people will be out of jobs and they will lose their personal documentation they will want to be able to get back to work to resume their lives but will not have access to the necessary documentation those individuals will be put  disadvantage i also would suggest to you when someone receives a notice of tentative noncompliance if there is a time limit by which the result has to be in place imagine the problems very natural thing to look at an immigration problem and try and find existing tools that we might use to apply to this problem but on the other hand as many of you pointed out sometimes that just creates new problems and you  y an undertaking created for one task to a totally different task you might hurt the primary task bluntly we don't want to impair in any way operation social  s citizenship and immigration services and social security are short literally thousands of employees or hundreds of employees and millions of dollars if we were to suddenly make this  high water mark don't have a figure from us but it would be in the hundreds basically we need to make a national commitment this goes in first then we're ready for the additional assignment as opposed to trying to do them simultaneously or some other way considering the timelines on this that would be an important consideration but also it's important to remember the balance here secure border initiative on the southwest border for example is running at about a billion to a billion one over should look like if this is information immigration enforcement only we're in a period where we can figure out what works and what takes the pressure off the border dress the magnet is that the way to go is that more cost effective given all the other discrimination  and other considerations i'm not trying to downplay that and it may also force the need for a guest worker program a little more stark to the worry of many is that we have enforcement without the dollars you have you didn't approach this in  a substantive way from a policy standpoint for you know what you just totally overwhelmed an infrastructure established for other purposes and some of that happening i wonder mr laird put it well i thought when he talked about as  we're going to quickly get to where this pilot is dealing with more numbers than we have in any way creating funding to accommodate is that correct and that's why in many other proposals out over a four five seven year period and that would be necessary i don't want process but we never we never put the resources in so we find ourselves where we are today and we wouldn't want that to happen if we were going to go to a mandatory system means resources don't talk one without the other bottom line on what i'm getting from you ms messenger representing employers especially the h r dimension of it do you have summary comments on basically employers being put at the forefront of i think that is the other thing that's been mentioned here and i really want to highlight is the notion of federal preemption what you're going to have is like you're putting this in place and that's going to be indirect cost they're just going to be clearly i'm assuming that given the features medicare and disability require contributions from legal workers given that companies that hire legally compete against companies like this that hire illegally given that these jobs are a magnet for illegal immigration i'm assuming this country does have responsibility to ensure a legal workforce questions how do we do it to perspective comments about mr johnson's bill and how it could work from h r standpoint because you have a responsibility to meet all these mandates mr layard you have to deal with this issue in the real world u s chamber has been a key leader on a number of issues here in congress not just in this session but in past as this committee goes forward what is the recommendation or what is the considered was my conclusion and i don't know that we have a great answer on a great on a great system that's going to solve all the problems but i do think it does doesn't need to be one that would be national in nature that would preempt the states from doing that i got chamber weighing in on a specific proposal i think we all have the principals pretty well identified i think could be helpful for the chamber tied in a five specific legislat proposals or bring one forward for this committee to consider because i think it's important to have that input and we need to move beyond sort of the generalities into the specifics if you don't mind again since you have to deal with it you know  it's going to take two three years to remedy two three four years and that really is intolerable and i really think it has been true under the leadership of  my understanding is that in the first few years that we had this cation system in place that the department of homeland security was reimbursing the so security ministration for the cost of administering part of this verification system since two thousand five though the performance of the h s in reimbursing the so sick you missed ration has been very spotty that's with a small system and i do expand it on i know you testified a bit to this but what's your sense given s would have to gin up but it's about a thousand fold over what they're doing now to try to do a verification system at a bigger in a bigger way than they do now with this pilot program and given that they haven't been reimbursing  ration for the cost of doing the verification what's your sense of whether d h just can fill its obligations to one not only match up but also to reimburse s s a for any verification work that he has to do well i think the funding question is really key here because if you don't have the funding you don't get the people you don't get the training these competing priorities come into play and you know you've got infrastructure problems at the local branches sometimes you know we didn't specifically look at the funding streams we know it was supposed to reimburse us and they had in many instances i'm not conversant on whether to what extent that's been going on so i'm we can look into that if you like but i just can't really answer that minor standing is it as i say  and say the error rates have not been improved the money isn't forthcoming for either on that security or so security to do this work but now you're obligated as employers to do the cation system and with the  associated responsibilities and liabilities that come from making any erroneous decisions mr jadwin has testified about some of the problems that occur for citizens who may ultimately lose jobs what kind of predicament does that put  s employers and if they have to worry not only about whether there's a valid check that's been done but the liability that may come if an erroneous dissident the decision is made for a u s worker who has lost an opportunity to take on a job that  discrimination laws where it would be very easy to run afoul of those and sometimes the employer gets right in the middle with some difficult and sometimes even impossible choices to me i couldn't agree more it's a hobson's choice that they're put in and it will slow down the free flow of labor across the economy i think there's one other thing that will happen and i have i really believe that your phones are going to ring up well before they start ringing off the hook perhaps i think  my colleague from texas sort of pointed that out mr brady that maybe what we can do is have all of you come forward with some ideas that can get bipartisan support so we could move on something that as i said at the very beginning of the year i think it did for us to do half baked solutions only makes the problem worse here in a vise our employers in america will be put in it inside in between a vice and it's going to continue to press upon them even harder and it makes it difficult for the economy unless we do this the right way i think most employers try to do this the right way there's a small group that is unscrupulous they're going to do this anyway in fact even if we pass a legitimates just a verification they'll probably have some of their employees go in the underground economy or call them independent contractors do some things that will put them off the books but i think for the vast vast majority of employers especially small employers who don't have the resources to do this in big ways they're trying to figure out how to get themselves extracted from a catch twenty two and so i would hope that the employer community would come forward and give us some ways that we could all come together to rectify this i'd also ask mr stand one last question seems to me that as the congressional budget office has said that if you just implement a verification system only very similar to expanding you verify nationally that what you actually do is what i just mentioned is you probably drive a lot of these employees and the employers that hire them into the underground economy which one loses a lot of income for the sole secure demonstration because a lot of these employees who are undocumented are paying taxes by could taxes and therefore pain in the system so when you lose the income that goes to the source security missed ration the trust fund to pay for benefits but you also now have driven more people into this underground economy where there's more opportunity for exploitation of these employees is there anything that you've uncovered in your examination of the situation that points in a different direction from what c b s says that in fact if you just do verification without correcting the database without dealing with some of the other issues that are involved in immigration reform that you actually can somehow solve this problem with regard to employment here in the u s for people who are authorized to work as you pointed out a minute ago you have employers who are trying to do things the right way and for those employers that's probably not going to happen to any degree there may be somebody who just doesn't put one employee through the fire but they're probably comply because most folks want to do the right thing there's a subset of employers have not been doing the right thing without much fear sanction because of the knowingly hire role is a pretty high bar for smith circles and those people are probably the most directly affected by universally verify system because all the sudden they're going to be called to account here just literally no fear of sanctions if there was a credible enforcement mechanism with a reasonable and easy to follow a path to do things the right way perhaps that would be minimized thank you  think for years i was around when i worked at social security administration saying all our administrative budget is less than one percent maybe we should have more than one percent maybe get rid of that backlog but no verification does not belong in social security  we're even talking about on the social security advisory board and the culture of social security has always been to say well you know you're sixty two you're eligible for benefits well you know we women live forever and so maybe there should be some education hey if you're a woman and sixty two and you might live eighty eight don't take it at sixty two even that to have the training for that is a big deal so i hope in your wisdom that you pass an immigration bill some time and you put  in the immigration bill but what you've got here today is you've got one hundred sixty five million people sending information into social security and that is being logged and those statements are being sent out to individuals we have fifty million checks going out every month they're never late that's a tough job cut my heavens i would give us some more money you gave us two hundred forty in this budget that we have a continuing resolution we might never should we wait until everything is one hundred percent before we move ahead with some sort of an even program however it turns i don't know when that they would ever come that it would be one hundred percent i think what might be considered is to make sure that all the controls and checks are official i've been an elected public official for thirty nine years at the local state and now at the congressional levels and as i mentioned earlier one of the things i've always prided myself on and i know a lot of my colleagues share this feeling is that want to constituent with a question a concern or a problem i get back to i get back to them in a timely fashion and i can't tell you the number of times through the  years that later constituents have come back to me and thank me for that even if i gave them the answer they didn't want you got back to me and it is a source of enormous frustration to me and i know every other member of congress to sit in their district office and listen to someone who very clearly has a legitimate case for social security disability benefits and we have to look them in the eye and say we'll get back to you in a conelly was correct in her earlier testimony in saying that commissioner asked true since he came back to the agency has been very very cooperative on this because sam and i have made sure we have talked to mike and have sat down with him we told him at the very beginning this was one of our priorities to do something about this disability backlog and then with sam and our other colleagues were able to get that extra money last year even more money this year as barbara out it's a modest beginning but it is a beginning we are hiring as we speak one hundred and seventy five new administrative law judges to deal with these backlogs so the point is we're making progress for heaven's sake let us not do anything to reverse that progress and make the situation worse we're in the process of moving toward making the situation better reducing the backlog and whether it's with regard to immigration or any other issue that we want to tackle let's make sure that it does not have a negative impact on what we are trying to do here because it is the responsibility of this subcommittee to preserve protect and defend the social security system and the people it serves and that's exactly