Read the news release.

A tipping point has finally been reached, apparently, on a national requirement that E-Verify be used by all employers to check the work eligibility of their new hires. A bill sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley), chairman of the subcommittee on immigration policy and enforcement, is set to begin moving toward passage this week. From an op-ed by the representatives in the LA Times:

The program quickly confirms 99.5% of work-eligible employees. Even though E-Verify is not mandatory, many employers willingly use the program. More than 250,000 American employers currently use it, and an average of 1,300 new businesses sign up each week.

Immigration: E-Verify helps employers weed out illegal hires – latimes.com

South Carolina moves a step closer to strengthening its immigration law with a vote by a House committee on Tuesday. From the Daily Comet:

South Carolina’s House Judiciary Committee voted 15-7 on Tuesday to advance a bill that would require law enforcement to check the status of people they suspect of being in the country illegally during a stop or arrest for something else. Opponents argued that the measure would worsen racial profiling and flies in the face of American freedoms.

SC legislators OK anti-illegal immigration bill | DailyComet.com

Made possible by a partnership between USCIS and the USPS, the SMI enables USCIS to confirm delivery of permanent resident cards and documents pertaining to travel and employment authorization. With USPS tracking information, USCIS customers can easily stay up-to-date on the delivery status of their documents and USCIS can confirm that these essential documents were delivered to the proper address.

SMI provides USCIS customers many benefits, including:

• The ability to track the status of their documents with USPS tracking information
• Quicker delivery—on average, documents sent through USPS Priority Mail should arrive two to four business days sooner than with first-class mail

Customers who receive notices of approval can contact USCIS’s Customer Service Center at 800-375-5283 to request tracking information for their documents. USCIS customer service representatives will provide customers with their USPS tracking number and current USPS delivery status.

Customers should wait at least two weeks after getting their approval notice before calling for information regarding their cases. When requesting tracking information, customers must also provide information from the receipt notice they received when they submitted their initial application. After receiving the tracking number from the USCIS Customer Service Center, customers can track the delivery status by visiting the Postal Service website at www.usps.com and entering the USPS tracking number into the Track & Confirm field.

SMI was one of several enhancements resulting from USCIS’s 2007 final fee schedule. USCIS first piloted the initiative in July 2008, delivering all re-entry permits and refugee travel documents using USPS Priority Mail with Delivery Confirmation. USCIS has also used SMI processes since July 2009 for re-mailing all permanent residence cards, as well as employment authorization and travel documents returned by the USPS to USCIS as undeliverable.

For more information on USCIS and its programs, please visit www.uscis.gov

After a political struggle that lasted until the last day of the session, the State Legislature on Thursday passed one of the strongest illegal immigration bills in the nation. Once signed by the Governor, the new law will, among other things, require businesses with 10 or more employees to enroll in E-Verify, a free federal web-based program through which employers can check the employment eligibility of their new hires.

The primary complaint from the business community is that the E-Verify requirement will place an unreasonable burden on Georgia businesses as they struggle to emerge from the recession. From an AJC article on the topic:

“We’re coming out of [a] recession, and businesses are doing all they can do right now to stay afloat,” said Jann Moore, senior director of public policy and education for the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce. “To turn around and put the responsibility of another policy on business is the wrong thing to do. The timing could not be worse.”

In truth, the fears are completely unjustified. First, the compromise reached on Thursday exempts smaller businesses for which, arguably, E-Verify would cause the greatest burden. As I will explain in a minute, even the smallest businesses can comply with the law with minimal hassle.

Second, businesses of any size can reduce the actual cost of compliance to a couple of minutes and less than $6 per new hire, a far cry from the $127 per new employee claimed by the business lobbyists.

In 2007, I founded Verify I-9 LLC, which is a Designated Agent of the E-Verify program. In short, we conduct verifications for our business clients. We have hundreds of clients from many states including Georgia.

Our average client employs fewer than four workers and hires no more than one or two new employees a year. But even for our larger clients, participation in E-Verify is essentially hassle-free.

Verify I-9 currently charges no setup fee and no monthly fee; in other words, it costs nothing to enroll in E-Verify. By using a Designated Agent (aka Employer Agent), the employer avoids the tutorials and mastery tests that are required before access to the system is granted. By hiring us, the employer saves three to six hours of labor cost on the front end.

E-Verify adds just a couple of minutes to the hiring process—the time that it takes to drop the I-9 form into a fax machine. We submit the information from the I-9 to E-Verify and return the response by email, usually within one business day. The employer writes a verification number on the I-9 form and files it away.

It really is as simple as that.

Our charge for this service is currently as low as $5.95, and no more than $9.90 per new hire.

[Sign up now]

Over 400,000 businesses are enrolled in E-Verify with over 1,000 new enrollees each week. Hundreds of Georgia businesses participate including Gwinnett-based E.R. Snell Construction, Cash Register & POS Systems Support, Next Step Electrical Services, Surig & Son Specialized Masonry, Drywall & Acoustic Contractors and Phillip Blount & Associates.

When you hear the business community, liberal politicians and pro-amnesty advocates foretelling the demise of Georgia’s economy, know that the complaints are unfounded and amount to nothing more than posturing to preserve the status quo.

Georgia lawmakers pass illegal immigration crackdown  | ajc.com

In November 2009, Vartanian told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents that the illegal immigrants no longer worked for Brownwood Furniture, but investigators discovered 18 illegal immigrants were still working for him.

Firm’s owner gets prison for hiring illegals – San Jose Mercury News

The customer survey evaluated key aspects of the E-Verify program such as registration, tutorial, ease of use, technical assistance, and customer service. E-Verify received an exceptionally high overall customer satisfaction score – 82 out of 100 the American Customer Satisfaction Index scale – compared to the government’s overall satisfaction score. One of the aspects of E-Verify that respondents liked the most was its customer support, which received a score of 89 – based significantly on enhancements to the system made under the Obama administration. Other key findings of the survey revealed that the overwhelming majority of users were likely to recommend E-Verify to other employers, were confident in E-Verify’s accuracy, and were likely to continue using the program.

“The E-Verify Program works exceptionally well, according to employers, and is a very promising tool for ensuring a legal workforce in the U.S.,” said USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas. “The high overall customer satisfaction score, along with the positive findings of the GAO report, are encouraging. While we are pleased with the program’s successes, we remain committed to continually improving E-Verify and enhancing this tool’s effectiveness for both workers and employers.”

The continued success of E-Verify demonstrated by these reports reflect the Obama administration’s commitment to smart, tough and effective strategies that build a strong foundation upon which immigrants can exercise their rights and responsibilities as Americans. However, passage of comprehensive immigration reform – grounded in principles of responsibility and accountability – is needed to fix our broken immigration system.

CFI Group, a consulting firm specializing in customer satisfaction measurements, developed the survey last July and questioned more than 4,500 random employers who currently use E-Verify. Respondents included new and current users and federal contractors who are required to use the system.

GAO reviewed USCIS’s E-Verify program by analyzing E-Verify query data from 2009 to 2010. GAO reported a significant reduction in the number of tentative nonconfirmations (TNCs), citing a 5.4 percent decrease in TNCs since FY 2007. The report also acknowledged the agency’s improvement in monitoring and ensuring employer compliance with E-Verify’s policies, and offering assistance to E-Verify employers who appear noncompliant. In addition, the report noted how E-Verify has added safeguards to minimize and secure the handling of new employees’ personal information by creating a privacy branch; safeguards that limit both the data collected for E-Verify and the people who can access the data. GAO made a number of recommendations to further improve the program and USCIS has concurred with those recommendations. 

More than 243,000 employers representing more than 834,000 worksites currently use E-Verify. On average, 1,000 new employers enroll each week. In FY 2010, the E-Verify Program ran more than 16 million queries. 

The E-Verify customer survey is available for review at http://www.uscis.gov/USCIS/E-Verify/E-Verify/e-verify-satisfaction-report-10-15-10.pdf. To read GAO’s report, as well as USCIS’s response to the GAO report, please visit http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11146.pdf. 

General information about USCIS, E-Verify and its programs and services can be found at www.uscis.gov/everify.

Your company can enroll in our program and be in full compliance with the Florida law in just a couple of hours. There are no setup fees and no monthly fees– enrollment costs you nothing until you hire someone. Even, then your cost is as low as $5.95 !

[O]n Tuesday, [Florida Governor] Rick Scott signed several executive orders, including Executive Order 11-02, which will require state agencies to use E-Verify for all current and prospective agency employees.  Perhaps more importantly for our readers, the Executive Order also requires all employers who are state contractors to use E-Verify to check the work eligibility status of anyone employed in Florida during the contract term, and anyone (including subcontractors) hired to perform work pursuant to the state contract.

Florida Governor Rick Scott Signs Executive Order Requiring E-Verify : Southwest Florida HR Law & Solutions

The measure was approved unanimously. The council all but agreed to the ordinance during a previous meeting, but held off on a vote over some technical concerns.

The law makes the use of E-Verify mandatory to get a Murrieta business license. It calls for code enforcement officers to check out any allegations of noncompliance.

MURRIETA: Council requires E-Verify for businesses | Local News | PE.com | Southern California News | News for Inland Southern California