Date: 2008-07-30
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. I rise today in support of the employees verification amendment. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. The Employee Verification Amendment Act reauthorizes the Department of Homeland Securitys (DHS) Basic Pilot electronic employment eligibility verification program. also known as "EVerify." Without congressional action. EVerify will expire in November 2008. This legislation provides for a 5year extension of this voluntary program for the electronic employment verification of employees. It also includes provisions that ensure DHS provides timely reimbursements to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for EVerifys use of SSA resources. Two Government Accountability Office studies are also authorized. The bill provides for the Department of Homeland Securitys basic pilot program. Specifically. DHSs electronic employment eligibility verification program (known as "Basic Pilot" or "EVerify") is scheduled to expire in November 2008. This legislation reauthorizes EVerify as a voluntary pilot program for an additional 5 yearsthrough 2013. EVerify is an internetbased system that can be used to verify the employment eligibility of newlyhired employees. It does so by checking an employees Social Security number and citizenship status against the Social Security database and. for noncitizens. it checks work authorization status against a separate DHS database. In the last 2 years. over a dozen states have passed employee verification laws. Some. like Arizona have mandated EVerify for all employers while other states require employers in certain sectors. such as government employers and contractors. to verify their employees work authorization status. The Federal government is also increasingly requiring EVerifys use. On June 6. 2008. President Bush signed an amendment to Executive Order 12989 requiring that more than 200.000 federal contractors to use EVerify. This action will likely triple the number of requests that must be processed through EVerity. Importantly. the bill provides certain protections to Social Security beneficiaries. This is critical because EVerify relies on the Social Security Administrations data and systems to verity the citizenship and Social Security numbers of all newlyhired individuals for their eligibility to work. According to the GAO. 100 percent of EVerify queries are first checked against the SSA database. When there are data mismatches. workers are instructed to contact SSA and must visit an SSA field office in order to resolve the discrepancy. As EVerify grows. so does SSAs workload. DHS is responsible for funding SSAs costs related to EVerify. using the Social Security Trust Fund for EVerify is against federal law. In prior years. DHSs reimbursements to SSA have been either delayed or not forthcoming at all. The bill also provides for two GAO studies" to be completed. First. it requires a study of the basic pilot confirmation system. The GAO will report to Congress on the causes of erroleous tentative nonconfirmations. how they are remedied and the effect they have on individuals. employers and Federal agencies. Second. the bill authorizes a study of the effect of the basic pilot on small entities. The bill requires that the GAO will examine the experiences of small entities (small businesses. nonprofits and municipalities) with using Basic Pilot by investigating direct and indirect impacts on basic pilot participants. It will also provide specific data on businesses with fewer than 50 employees as well as on small entities operating in states that have mandated use of the basic pilot program. This legislation ensures that DHS provides timely and appropriate payments to SSA. so that Everify does not interfere with SSAs ability to serve seniors. people with disabilities. and survivors.