July 31, 2009

Senate Judiciary Committee Receives Testimony on E-Verify

On July 21, 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security received testimony on E-Verify from Michael Aytes, Acting Director, U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS); Lynden Melmed, former Chief of Counsel for USCIS; and James Ziglar, former Commission of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and currently Senior Fellow, Migration Policy Institute.

Mr. Aytes testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the growth of the E-Verify program and improvements and enhancements that have been implemented to reduce the number of mismatches, to further educate employers and employees on the proper use of and compliance with E-Verify, to protect employee privacy and to detect identity fraud.

While recognizing that many improvements have been made to E-Verify, Mr. Aytes stated that the Administration is dedicated to making continuing improvements and enhancements to the program to address issues of usability, fraud, and discrimination and to improve the automatic verification rate. Some of the enhancements projected for fiscal year 2010 include: (1) implementing system changes to automatically verify international students and exchange visitors’ work authorization through SEVIS data; (2) automated system updates for new hires with Temporary Protected Status (TPS); (3) improvements on the date of birth entry to reduce errors from reversing the month and date of birth; (4) expanding the types of documents available to provide photo confirmation, including the feasibility of incorporating state-issued driver’s license photos; and (5) procedures to enable victims of identity theft who have filed reports with the police and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to lock and unlock their records in E-Verify.

Mr. Melmed and Mr. Ziglar also testified to the benefits of the E-Verify program and to the enhancements implemented by the USCIS that made the program more usable and accurate. Both, however, testified that a fundamental problem with E-Verify was its inability to detect identify theft. To resolve this flaw, Mr. Melmed recommended that Congress should consider expanding E-Verify’s photo-tool and incorporating biometric identification documentation. Mr. Ziglar recommended incorporating a biometric identification and verification module into the E-Verify system.

For the complete testimony, please refer to the link below:

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/hearing.cfm?id=3982.