The Senate has passed an expansive immigration bill which includes E-Verify (E-Spy)
The Senate has passed an expansive immigration bill that includes employment verification by the federal government for all U.S. employees -- "E-Verify" -- within five years.
In testimonybefore Congress, EPIC warned of inaccurate employment determinations in the E-Verify system and said that Privacy Act safeguards must be strengthened to ensure fairness and accountability.
In June 2011, EPIC filed commentswith the Department of Homeland Security in opposition to the expansion of E-Verify.
The New York Times wrote about E-Verify, the system of employment verification tucked into the immigration legislation that passed the Senate later in the afternoon. As the Times notes, E-Verify is "a linchpin of the legislation… that would require all employers in the country within five years to use a federal electronic system to verify the legal eligibility to work of every new hire, including American citizens."
This new system suggests that all Americans need to ask permission from the government before taking a job.
Ron Paul said:
"There is nothing stopping the use of E-Verify for purposes unrelated to work verification, and these expanded uses could be authorized by agency rule-making or executive order. So it is not inconceivable that, should this bill pass, the day may come when you are not be able to board an airplane or exercise your second amendment rights without being run through the E-Verify database. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the personal health care information that will soon be collected by the IRS and shared with other federal agencies as part of Obamacare will also be linked to the E-Verify system."
In the immigration bill there is a “Trojan Horse” clause known as the mandatory E-Verify system which requires all Americans to carry a “tamper-proof” social security card. Sounds to me much like we are heading into the RFID debate soon.
So before you can legally begin your new job, American citizens will have to show “their papers” to their prospective employer, who will have to verify their identity and eligibility to hold a job in the US by running the information through the newly-created federal E-Verify database.
The database which will contain photographs taken from passport files and state driver’s licenses will most likely be abused . The law gives federal bureaucrats broad discretion in adding other “biometric” identifiers to the database. It also gives the bureaucracy broad authority to determine what features the “tamper proof” card should contain.
One of the uses will be chip in this card that will undoubtedly also keep track of when you punch in to work and when you leave and where/when you apply for jobs. Someone could easily use this information to rob your house or know your trends. Its a complete violation of privacy.
If you create a system for one use that sounds good it can easily be used for other uses that are not so good. Just look at the Patriot Act and NDAA.
This will eventually lead to the infamous No Hire list Much like the No fly list to be put into motion and undoubtedly be abused to the extreme. Over 1 million names are on the no fly list as potential terror threat. Did you know your 7 times more likely to die of a shark attack than a terrorist attack? So ask yourself why is the government not hiring more life guards on the beach if they really care about your safety? Why do they push such programs like "see something, say something".
The ACLU expressed their concernsmany times – about privacy issues, widespread oppositionfrom across the political spectrum, and accuracy issues – but one thing that jumped out of the Timespiece was supporters' contention that the system is highly accurate.
From the Times:
Of more than 20.2 million workers run through the system in 2012, only 0.26 percent turned out to be legally authorized after an initial erroneous denial, according to official figures. The system identified 221,155 new hires who did not have legal documents to work in this country. Officials said those figures proved the system was effective.
This framing is odd, to say the least, because it puts the number of wrongful denials in the form of a percentage while describing correct determinations as a number. So let's add flesh to those abstract numbers. Look what happens if you make this an apples to apples comparison: 20.2 million workers x .0026 (.26 percent) = 52,520 workers wrongly identified.
That means that we have 221,155 correct determinations and 52,520 erroneous determinations (where a U.S. worker has to face a daunting bureaucracy and contest the decision before making a living again). In addition, what the article doesn't say is that of 221,155 undocumented workers flagged by the system, 36,000 were people who just didn't contest their determination. In other words, they might have been undocumented but they also might have just moved onto a different job at a place that didn't use E-Verify. (See the numbers for yourself here.)
Perhaps you think that a best case scenario where E-Verify catches 4.5 undocumented workers for every one U.S. worker wrongly identified is a trade worth making but, at a minimum, it's a trade we should clearly understand.
This issue is even starker when you consider what a nationwide E-Verify mandate means. There are currently about 154 million workers in the U.S. A 0.26% error rate represents a best case scenario where 400,000 people will be wrongfully caught up in E-Verify and forced to prove their right to work.
At the end of the day, efficacy may be in the eye of the beholder—though I bet it looks different if you're one of those innocent workers who gets misidentified.
http://epic.org/2013/07/senate-adopts-immigration-bill.html
http://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights-technology-and-liberty-womens-rights/e-verify-effective-depends-how-you-look
http://www.mrconservative.com/2013/07/20347-government-finds-new-way-to-invade-privacy-mandatory-e-verify-cards/
http://www.southmilwaukeenow.com/blogs/communityblogs/214082351.html