Evaluation Of Eligibility Verification Basic Pilot Raises Concerns

IMMIGRANTS & EMPLOYMENT

IRCA Employment Verification and
Antidiscrimination Protections

EVALUATION OF ELIGIBILITY VERIFICATION BASIC PILOT RAISES CONCERNS
Immigrants' Rights Update, Vol. 17, No. 5, July 15, 2003

The two private contractors hired by the U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (BCIS) (formerly the Immigration and Naturalization Service) to conduct an independent evaluation of the BCIS’s Basic Pilot employment eligibility verification program recently released their overdue report on their evaluation of the program. The report raises serious concerns about whether the program should be made mandatory or expanded, as originally planned. Among the many problems found in the evaluation, which was conducted jointly by Westat and Temple University Institute for Survey Research, was a failure by the INS/BCIS to provide timely data, which has delayed the confirmation of workers’ employment eligibility in one-third of the cases handled under the Basic Pilot program.

The evaluation was mandated by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), which provided for the creation of three employment eligibility verification pilot programs. The Basic Pilot operates in California, Florida, Illinois, Nebraska, New York, and Texas. The other two pilot programs are the Citizenship Attestation Verification Pilot, which operates in Arizona, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia, and the Machine Readable Document Pilot, which currently operates only in Iowa. These computerized pilot programs were set up to test whether the Form I-9 employment eligibility verification process could be simplified to reduce the burden on employers, and to reduce illegal discrimination and violations of workers’ civil liberties and privacy rights, as well as incidents of false claims to U.S. citizenship and document-related fraud.

The report confirms the concerns many immigrants’ rights advocates have had—i.e., that many employers are using the pilot programs improperly, to the detriment of immigrant workers. Among advocates’ main concerns have been (1) the incentive the pilot programs provide for employers to misuse the government databases to which the programs give them access, to prescreen job applicants on the discriminatory basis of national origin or citizenship; (2) the programs’ reliance on INS and Social Security Administration databases that are notoriously inaccurate; (3) the insufficient time provided to workers to correct or update their records with the SSA or the INS when their employment eligibility is not initially confirmed; and (4) privacy-related concerns about how much access employers have to information about workers, as well as about the potential for employers to abuse that access.

The Basic Pilot evaluation report says that some employers surveyed are not following the federally mandated memorandum of understanding they signed as a condition of participating in the program. The report cites evidence that some employer participants are engaging in prohibited practices, such as prescreening job applicants and taking adverse action against workers who receive a tentative nonconfirmation in the first phase of the Basic Pilot’s eligibility verification procedure. While the evaluation found no documented case of a specific privacy violation, some employers also failed to safeguard access to the pilot program’s computer—e.g., they left passwords and instructions for accessing the program’s system in plain view. Finally, the report says that some employers missed deadlines required by the pilot and failed to inform workers of their rights when the system was unable to confirm their employment eligibility. Despite these egregious violations, the report recommends continuing the Basic Pilot program, with some improvements.

Apparently the report was completed in Jan. 2002 but was made public only earlier this year (2003). According to a cover letter from the INS released with the report, it was provided to Congress in Dec. 2002. Well before that time, in Jan. 2002, Congress quietly extended the pilot programs for an additional two years. At the time of this extension, the Basic Pilot was due to have expired in Nov. 2001. Because of the extension, it is now scheduled to sunset in Nov. 2003, and in the meanwhile it will be critical for advocates to document cases of employer misuse and abuse of the program.

A summary of the evaluation report can be found at www.nilc.org/immsemplymnt/ircaempverif/basicpiloteval_westat&temple.pdf.