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Within the first week of the new session of Congress, representatives
introduced two separate federal legislative proposals aimed at making it
harder for undocumented workers to find employment in the United
States. If one of the bills were to become law, its effect would be to
make the Social Security number (SSN) card a national ID document.
This bill, the Illegal Immigration Enforcement and
Social Security Protection Act of 2005 (H.R. 98), proposes sweeping
changes to the SSN card and to the I‑9 employment eligibility
verification form. It was introduced on Jan. 4, 2005, by Rep. David
Dreier (R-CA) and cosponsored by Reps. Jeb Bradley (R-NH), Lamar S.
Smith (R-TX), Darrell E. Issa (R-CA), Thomas G. Tancredo (R-CO), and
Silvestre Reyes (D-TX).
The Dreier bill would require that SSN cards be
made of durable plastic or similar material, contain a machine-readable
electronic strip on the back of each card, and include a digital
photograph. The bill also would require the Dept. of Homeland Security
to establish an employment eligibility database that would include
information regarding the citizenship and work authorization status of
workers so that employers could access the information through the new
SSN card’s electronic strip. Information that is already available to
employers via the employment eligibility verification pilot programs
that the federal government currently operates, including the Basic
Pilot program and the Citizenship Attestation Verification Pilot, would
be incorporated into this new database.
H.R. 98 also would require that all workers
starting new employment in the U.S. would have to present the proposed
new SSN card, which means that anyone who changed jobs after the this
provision went into effect would be required to obtain a new SSN card.
This provision marks a sharp break with current employment eligibility
verification and antidiscrimination provisions of the Immigration and
Nationality Act. Under current law, employees must be allowed to choose
which documents from a list of acceptable documents to present to
establish their identity and employment eligibility when they complete
the I-9 employment eligibility verification form for an employer. Under
the Dreier bill, however, employers would be required to verify that new
hires have the new SSN card. Employers would actually have to see each
potential new employee’s new SSN card before they could hire the worker,
and they would be required to verify the worker’s employment eligibility
through either a telephonic verification system or through a card-reader
verification system that could read the new card’s electronic strip.
The Dreier bill also would repeal the existing
provisions in INA section 1324a(a)(5), which states that employers are
deemed to have complied with required employment eligibility
verification procedures when they receive referrals from state
employment agencies with documentation stating that the individuals
being referred for employment are work-authorized. Under the new bill,
employers would be required to verify the employment eligibility even of
workers referred by state employment agencies. Similarly, H.R. 98 would
repeal the structure set up in INA section 1324a(a)(6), under which a
successor employer that is a member of an employer association that is
part of a collective bargaining unit is deemed to have complied with the
I-9 process for a particular worker if the previous employer has already
completed an I-9 form for the worker, as long as the successor employer
retains the proper documentation.
The Dreier bill would substantially increase
the civil and criminal penalties for which employers are liable if they
knowingly hire an undocumented worker or fail to comply with the
required employment eligibility verification procedures. Under the
bill, employers found to have violated the employer sanctions provisions
would also be responsible for the costs incurred by the federal
government in removing the undocumented worker from the U.S. H.R. 98
would authorize $10 million per fiscal year between 2006 and 2010 to
improve technology for combating unlawful immigration, as well as an
additional $100 million to carry out civil and criminal penalties
against employers that hire undocumented workers. Finally, the bill
provides that the number of agents dedicated to enforcing its provisions
and to worksite enforcement generally be increased by no less than an
additional 10,000 agents.
The second bill, H.R. 19, would make the Basic
Pilot employment eligibility verification program a permanent program
that would be mandatory for all employers. H.R. 19 was introduced by
Reps. Ken Calvert (R-CA), Duncan Hunter (R-CA), Elton Gallegly (R-CA),
F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Darrell E.
Issa (R-CA), Mary Bono (R-CA), Gary G. Miller (R-CA), Randy “Duke”
Cunningham (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), David Dreier (R-CA), and
Edward R. Royce (R-CA).
Both bills would render the existing Basic Pilot
program mandatory and permanent, and neither addresses any of the
program’s shortcomings as detailed in a federal government–commissioned
independent evaluation that was made public in early 2003. For example,
neither bill contains any protections for workers whom the Basic Pilot’s
database is unable to confirm as being work-authorized, despite the fact
that the database contains outdated and inaccurate information. For
more information on the problems posed by the Basic Pilot program, see “Evaluation of
Eligibility Verification Basic Pilot Raises Concerns,”
Immigrants’ Rights Update,
July 15, 2003, p. 11.
Although these are stand-alone bills and advocates
do not think they have the political traction to become law, it is
important to point out that H.R. 98 has bipartisan support, since one of
its cosponsors—Rep. Reyes of Texas—is a Democrat. Absent a
comprehensive overhaul of the country’s immigration system, however,
these proposals will fail at achieving their stated goal of deterring
employers from knowingly hiring undocumented workers. Indeed, if the
bills were to become law, undocumented workers would be pushed further
underground and into the informal economy. Finally, privacy advocates
and other staunch opponents of a national ID card will likely denounce
these bills, especially H.R. 98, as being an effort, under the guise of
immigration reform, to create such a document.
By
Marielena Hincapíe, NILC
director of programs
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