E-Verify

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05/07/2013
E-Verify

Homeland Security, May I Earn a Living?

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 4:43pm

One of the things in play in the current wrangling over immigration reform is whether we will see the E-Verify work authorization program expanded nationwide and made mandatory. We’ve just put out a white paper summarizing “The 10 big Problems With E-Verify.”

Overall, E-Verify represents a move toward the creation of a “Mother may I” or “permission society” in the United States. In an attempt to stop the tiny percentage of those starting jobs in the United States each year who are unauthorized workers, E-Verify would force everyone to obtain affirmative permission from government bureaucracies before engaging in the core life functions of working and earning a living. That not only inverts the relationship between the individual and government, but will lead to a number of other serious problems, which we set forth in the paper.

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04/17/2013
E-Verify

Mandatory E-Verify: A Giant Plunge Into a National ID System

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:23pm

Today's release of an immigration reform proposal from the Gang of Eight raises a host of civil liberties issues, many of which the ACLU will undoubtedly be commenting on in the coming days and weeks.

Today, I'm focusing on our concerns with one particular program, E-Verify. Currently, E-Verify is a largely voluntary system where employers can check with the Department of Homeland Security to see if someone is allowed to work. Basically it's a giant list of everyone – immigrants and citizens – legally in the United States.

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05/24/2013
Immigration Reform 2013

Immigration Reform: Week Three Is History (And Earlier Than Expected!)

By Michael Macleod-Ball, Chief of Staff, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:01am

We were prepared for trench warfare in the third week of deliberations over the landmark immigration...

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05/20/2013
E-Verify

Immigration Reform: Week Two Is Through

By Michael Macleod-Ball, Chief of Staff, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:59am

After two more long days last week of largely unsuccessful attempts to scuttle the immigration reform bill, the Senate Judiciary Committee now is looking at the gargantuan task of wrapping up consideration – somehow, some way – before the end of this week. On Tuesday, the Committee completed work on the border security section of the bill and then began consideration of the section dealing with non-immigrant visas – addressing labor needs. Work on those issues continued on Thursday and then transitioned to enforcement, including the E-Verify employment verification system. All told, the Committee was busy this week – considering 64 amendments and adopting 40 of them. All but two of the amendments were adopted on a bipartisan basis. Ninety-nine amendments have now been considered (including modifications), and quite a few more have been withdrawn, out of the 300 amendments originally filed. Despite the accomplishments, the Committee still must figure out a way to deal with perhaps 150 amendments before Senators return to their home states at the end of the week for the Memorial Day recess.

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04/16/2013
Immigration and Customs Enforcement

ACLU Lens: ACLU Responds to Gang of 8 Immigration Plan

By Shawn Jain, ACLU at 1:10pm

The ACLU welcomed the bill summary released late last night by a bipartisan group of key senators – ‘the Gang of 8', and we eagerly await the introduction of complete bill text, expected later today.

For over 90 years the ACLU has defended the rights of all Americans, whether born in this country or somewhere else, because the Constitution protects the civil liberties and civil rights of all people. We will continue to serve in this critical role as the debate over the immigration reform bill begins. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said:

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11/16/2011
E-Verify

Oversharing Is Never a Good Thing, Especially When it’s With DHS

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 1:55pm

Sometimes sharing is bad. Don’t worry. We don’t plan to rush into kindergartens across America and break the news to all the 5-year-olds, but it’s true. Especially when it comes to national security and your privacy, it may be necessary to collect and use certain information, but wrong to share it.

When a federal government advisory committee recently revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (which contains both the Secret Service and the TSA) is in the “process of creating a policy framework and technology architecture for enhancing DHS's information-sharing capabilities,” it immediately raised these types of concerns and today we sent a letter to DHS outlining those concerns.

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02/28/2013
E-Verify

E-Verify: Immigration Reform Cannot Come at the Expense of the Right to Privacy

By Sandra Fulton, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:13am

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security held a hearing yesterday on E-Verify...

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09/14/2011
E-Verify

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs — Even the ACLU is Talking About Jobs

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:34am

Everyone in Washington is talking about jobs these days. It's not surprising — with the country trapped in a long economic downturn and the President making it his key priority. Job creation is not something in which we claim any expertise, but that doesn't mean we can't pay attention to our common sense.

This week the spin over creating jobs has gotten so broad it has even pulled in our issues. Specifically, House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith is pushing the committee to approve legislation to mandate the use of the E-Verify program by all employers. E-Verify is a series of connected databases, in essence a giant list, of everyone who is supposed to be allowed to work in the US. Before you start your job, your employer is supposed to check E-Verify. If you are on the list, you get a job. If not, you don't (or you have to go wait in line at a Social Security Administration (SSA) office to prove they made a mistake).

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04/17/2012
E-Verify

Identity Theft and the War on Immigrants

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 3:41pm

The war on America's immigrants can lead to some very strange results. In a classic example, last year Republicans actually said, when it comes to immigration at least, new government regulations actually create jobs. But these attacks on immigrants cause real harm to ordinary Americans who don't think that immigration affects them. We've already talked about how mistakes in E-Verify, the federal database of eligible workers, can keep Americans from getting jobs. Tomorrow the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing that highlights another problem with E-Verify.

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10/25/2011
E-Verify

I Went to Washington and Democracy Broke Out

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 11:11am

Veterans of Washington D.C. political scene are well familiar with congressional staff briefings. For the overwhelming majority of you who don’t share that dubious honor, these briefings are aimed at congressional staff and the public in an effort to avoid holding many individual meetings on a specific issue. They are typically dry affairs with a few panelists and some Q&A.

That was not the experience I had yesterday afternoon. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, held a briefing on legislation that would make the E-Verify program mandatory. E-Verify is an ongoing effort by the federal government to essentially produce a giant list of everyone who is authorized to work in the United States. Supporters want all employers to check it before they can hire a new employee. As the ACLU has said in the past, the system is riddled with errors, keeps lawful employees from working, lacks due process and may result in a national ID system.

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