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E-Verify Has Problems, And the Government Agrees With UsOver the weekend, there was a USA Today article giving prime coverage to those who advocated for an E-Verify requirement as part of the economic stimulus package signed into law a couple weeks ago. E-Verify, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) employment verification program, would require all employers to verify the work eligibility of new hires through error-ridden government databases. The article was particularly troubling because it incorrectly cited the systemic problems associated with using the E-Verify. Very late in the article, it says: The business groups and immigrant advocacy groups argue that the E-Verify database is riddled with errors that could result in millions of workers being wrongly identified as not authorized for work. They say requiring its use before hiring would impose a cost burden on employers and open them to lawsuits.We found this really misleading, because the business and immigrant advocacy groups like the ACLU are not alone in arguing E-Verify will result in delays due to the errors in Americans' files. You know who else agrees with us? The federal government. As Media Matters reported Monday, numerous federal reports have been published to this point. A 2008 Government Accountability Office report on E-Verify found: About 7 percent of the queries cannot be immediately confirmed as work authorized by SSA, and about 1 percent cannot be immediately confirmed as work authorized by [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] because employees' information queried through the system does not match information in SSA or DHS databases… because employees' citizenship status or other information, such as name changes, is not up to date in the [Social Security Administration] database, generally because individuals have not notified SSA of information changes that occurred.Even the Social Security Administration (SSA), one of the governmental agencies potential employees’ records are verified through, admits to errors in its system. An internal assessment in 2006 found that approximately 4.1 percent of records need to be updated and could result in incorrect feedback for employment verification purposes. In fact, the SSA self-reported (PDF) that around 17.8 million of its files contain incorrect data. Of that 17.8 million, 12.7 of those files concern U.S. citizens. So we're not the only ones who question the reliability of government databases. It's crucial to note that federally commissioned assessments and reports find employment verification systems like E-Verify have significant hurdles to universal implementation — hurdles that, unless fixed, will injure innocent Americans and lawfully present immigrants, as well as our economy as a whole.
Your Medical Records Are Safe…HopefullyOne of the initiatives included in the economic stimulus package is to provide funding to begin the transition from paper to digital medical records. The move to paperless records has the potential to increase the efficiency of our health care system, which can lead to lower costs for consumers and providers. But a significant concern is the potential for abuse once our personal medical histories are made easily transmittable, because the information they contain is very valuable to those who stand to make money off of the medical care we all need. For this reason, the ACLU was encouraged that strong privacy protections were included in the conference committee report, released last night, and adopted by the House of Representatives this afternoon. The last hurdle is the Senate, which is debating the package now and will vote this evening. The strongest protection included was a partial prohibition on the sale of medical records, meaning only those who have a justifiable reason to view our medical histories can do so. Even more significant is that our information can't be sold to be used for ulterior motives, like marketing medicines and targeting consumers. This is significant because it is the first rollback of the data broker industry anywhere in federal law. If the Senate adopts the current privacy safeguards and President Obama then signs them into law, health care consumers can rest assured that their medical histories will not be turned into a commodity and sold on the open market. It's reassuring to see our elected officials stand up to the interests of "big business" for the safety and benefit of their constituents.
Could the Stimulus Package Prevent Americans From Working?(Originally posted on Daily Kos.) Now that the Senate has passed its version of the economic stimulus package, by a 61 to 37 vote today, representatives from each legislative chamber will meet to try and work out the differences between the two pieces of legislation. One significant difference the Washington Legislative Office will have its eye on is a troubling provision mandating the use of electronic employment verification systems (E-Verify) for any recipient of stimulus funding. The ACLU is troubled by E-Verify because it is known to keep innocent Americans from working. The system checks individuals' citizenship status against their records with the Social Security Administration, a government agency plagued with errors and massive backlogs. This then leads to delays in the hiring of workers, which is harmful to both the employer and the employee. This is not what Americans, nor our economy, need during a time of financial turmoil. E-Verify was included in the House package, an amendment proposed by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), but was not added to the Senate version. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) was emphatic about proposing similar language, but was not given the opportunity for an amendment vote. This difference in packages will surely be a point of contention for those meeting this week to iron out the two versions, in hopes of having agreed upon legislation sent to President Obama before the President's Day recess next week. The stimulus package is supposed to put Americans to work, not keep them from it. If E-Verify is part of the legislation sent to President Obama, the stimulus could end up having the very opposite, and very negative, effect. Tags: Civil Liberties News
Watch Lists Spiraling Out of ControlAlas, innocent Americans now have been granted a far more viable option to go about removing their names from the dreaded Terrorist Screening Center's aviation watch lists. Prior to Monday's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to allow individuals to sue the government, the only redress was an endless paper trail of forms to fill out that were almost exclusively void of results. Yet, the ACLU remains skeptical that the federal government will actually respond to the 9th Circuit's decision in the appropriate manner by actually crafting a process to help innocent people get off and stay off the watch lists. Back in July, the ACLU marked the millionth record added to the terrorist watch lists, a number extrapolated from internal inspector general reports on the growth of the lists. It's hard to imagine that there are now over a million terrorists walking the streets of America waiting for their opportunity to strike. Instead, the terrorist watch lists have spiraled madly out of control, wreaking havoc to the travel plans of the innocent who now find themselves swept up in DHS's bloated and ineffective attempts at security. Just today, the Wall Street Journal ran an article describing a preliminary Congressional investigation into the effectiveness of the current terrorist watch list system and its scheduled replacement. Both are found to have major systemic flaws, including the inability to easily search for names within the databases. This finding led Representative Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Science and Technology subcommittee to claim the current system, "has been crippled by technical flaws" and its replacement system "if actually deployed, will leave our country more vulnerable than the existing yet flawed system today." The ACLU reiterates its call for the abandonment of the terrorist watch lists, instead adopting national security measures that focus our limited resources on actual terrorist threats – those for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist ties or activities, and not reporters at CNN or former Democratically-appointed Justice Department officials. |
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