June 13, 2008

Colleges With Federal Contracts Will Have to Use New Employee-Verification System

Washington — All colleges and universities entering into federal-government contracts will be required to use the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify system to establish the immigration status of newly hired employees and all employees working on such contracts, under an executive order signed this week by President Bush.

E-Verify is the federal government’s automated system for allowing employers to verify job applicants’ eligibility to work as U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents, or authorized immigrants. When an employer submits an applicant’s name and personal information for eligibility verification, E-Verify checks that information against Social Security Administration and Homeland Security Department databases.

A proposed rule, published on Thursday in the Federal Register, states that all employees of federal contractors who are newly hired or who are directly engaged in work on those contracts would need to have their work eligibility checked through E-Verify. The rule applies to contracts of more than $3,000 with work performed within the United States, including those with colleges and universities.

It is unclear how many colleges will be affected by the new rule, although it could hamper colleges seeking to hire foreign scholars or to engage foreign graduate students. Users of the E-Verify system will have to foot the costs of using it, including start-up and training expenses, according to the notice.

Ada Meloy, general counsel at the American Council on Education, said educators were concerned about E-Verify because of error rates in the federal database used to verify employees’ eligibility. “We think this is going to cause some angst,” Ms. Meloy said.

E-Verify has been problematic since it was established, in 1996, as a voluntary pilot program. About 7 percent of queries to E-Verify cannot be verified immediately by the Social Security Administration, and about 1 percent cannot be immediately confirmed by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, according to the Government Accountability Office. The GAO also found that the E-Verify system cannot protect against workers’ using stolen identity information and stolen Social Security numbers.

Public comments on the proposed rule are due by August 11. —Karin Fischer

Comments

1. Oh, the joy of impending retirement! I can’t wait. The ever-increasing imposition of unfunded mandates, especially when the issuing agency is often incapable of supplying the verification demanded, is becoming an unsustainable drain on college and university resources.

   The only solution I can envisage is to elect to Congress people who see the wisdom of providing infrastructure support along with the mandates. For the last two decades or more OMB has prevented grant and contract holders from supporting essential infrastructure with Federal funds (other than through F&A allowances), with the result that investigators are overwhelmed with administrative minutiae. As Congress and the Administration pile on more and more unfunded requirements, university administrative offices get larger and larger, and still more resources are drained from research. I have yet to hear a credible reason why we can’t go back to the “good old days” when essential infrastructure was provided as a direct cost in grants and contracts.

   — Art Broom    Jun 13, 04:38 PM    #

2. First contracts then grants and all colleges and universities who receive federal funds (Title IV) financial aid will have their employees go though the system; then of course all the student employees would have to go through it. I suppose International Students can work at Colleges if they pass the E-Verify. Sounds like governement run everything.

   — Fred    Jun 13, 04:55 PM    #

3. Make a pact with the devil ans sell your soul. Universities are making billions off of the government largesse. If you don’t like it, just op out and not take the money. Stop whining!

   — Horace    Jun 14, 08:41 PM    #

4. Horace—thank you for clarifying your position on helping to make us all safe.Like all the other “Big Brother” nations in the world you will help us continue to let the central government intrude on us all. What next??—required video and audio monitoring of all classrooms?? Or maybe establishment of student groups to monitor and help stamp out dissent. Finally, note that the Bush cronies in Iraq are exempt from this requirement.

   — John    Jun 15, 08:42 AM    #

5. Then how come Ameircans have a hard time doing research in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, North Korean, Cuba, etc?

   — Michael    Jun 16, 09:58 AM    #

6. In order to uphold an empire abroad, you have to have a police state at home. Here’s a quote, who said it? “We will not take away America’s freedoms. America will do that to itself.” Answer: Osama Bin laden. He’s a horrific murder (though so are we), but he’s not stupid.

   — DDVA    Jun 16, 10:48 AM    #

7. The asaninity of the Bush administration cannot be erased soon enough. This will affect every research university that has federal grants, which is essentially all of them. When it comes to hiring adjunct faculty for campus and distance teaching, this will make the paperwork even more byzantine and time-consuming (therefore EXPENSIVE in terms of staff time, process and record-keeping) than ever before.

   — Al    Jun 16, 12:27 PM    #

8. DDVA,

   Huh? Empire abroad? Police state?

   The only emperor that still exists in the world is in Japan. We have a President. The President is voted into office by our representatives in the Electoral College. If you don’t like the President, then vote for different Electoral College members next time around. If you don’t like that we have an Electoral College (which I do like, by the way) then vote for Representatives and Senators who will be willing to submit an amendment to the Constitution to get rid of it. Your choice. Just don’t whine when you don’t get enough folks in enough states to vote the same way. It’s called “representative democracy” and it happens to be our system. It has worked well for us for the last 230 years or so, and I for one am not willing to mess with success.

   The United States does exert strong economic and military influence in the world, as we should for self protection, but that does not make us an empire.

   Now, what have you personally experienced since September 11th, 2001, that would make you think we live in a police state? Have government agents come to your door in the middle of the night and dragged you away because of your views? Have you been prevented from traveling anywhere? (I said prevented – not inconvenienced by a security system that is trying to keep you alive when you fly.) Do we have triple stranded razor sharp ribbon wire fences along our borders with armed guards looking through binoculars for someone who tries to get out of the country? (I saw those towers on the former East German/West German border.) These are the behaviors of a police state. Honestly – what horror have you personally experienced lately that would indicate that we live in a “police state”?

   A police state is a place from which most people want to escape. The United States of America is the one country that sees people risk their lives while attempting to get in.

   Just think a bit before you make such statements.

   — FB    Jun 16, 12:37 PM    #

9. So if I’m interpreting the stats presented in the article correctly, 93 percent of queries to E-Verify are verified immediately by the Social Security Administration, and about 99 percent are immediately confirmed by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services. That’s a pretty good batting average for any data base. Yes, the system cannot protect against stolen identity information and stolen Social Security numbers but that’s why you use protection in depth in any properly designed security system. So what’s the beef?

   — Bill F.    Jun 16, 12:54 PM    #

10. The system is badly designed and deeply flawed. Please see the USACM testimony on the problems with the system at
    http://usacm.acm.org/usacm/weblog/index.php?p=606

    Even if it were a good idea, this is a terrible implementation.

    As an aside, I do find it odd to see hostility to research and inquiry on an academic blog.

    — Jean Camp    Jun 16, 02:28 PM    #

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