Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification

Andorra Bruno
Specialist in Immigration Policy

Many years of debate about unauthorized immigration to the United States culminated in 1986 in the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This law sought to address unauthorized immigration, in part, by requiring all employers to examine documents presented by new hires to verify identity and work authorization and to complete and retain employment eligibility verification (I-9) forms. Ten years later, in the face of a growing illegal alien population, Congress attempted to strengthen the employment verification process by establishing pilot programs for electronic verification, as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA).

The Basic Pilot program (known now as E-Verify), the first of the three IIRIRA employment verification pilots to be implemented and the only one still in operation, began in November 1997. Originally scheduled to terminate in November 2001, it has been extended several times. It is currently scheduled to terminate on September 30, 2012, in accordance with the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010 (P.L. 111-83).

E-Verify is administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (DHS/USCIS). The program has been growing in recent years. On January 22, 2011, there were 244,135 employers enrolled in E-Verify, representing 836,718 hiring sites. E-Verify is a primarily voluntary program, but there are some mandatory participation requirements. Among them is a rule, which became effective on September 8, 2009, requiring certain federal contracts to contain a new clause committing contractors to use E-Verify.

Under E-Verify, participating employers submit information about their new hires (name, date of birth, Social Security number, immigration/citizenship status, and alien number, if applicable) from the I-9 form. This information is automatically compared with information in Social Security Administration and, if necessary, DHS databases to verify identity and employment eligibility.

The 111th Congress considered provisions on E-Verify, and legislation on electronic employment eligibility verification has been introduced in the 112th Congress. In weighing such proposals, Congress may find it useful to evaluate them in terms of their potential impact on a set of related issues: unauthorized employment; verification system accuracy, efficiency, and capacity; discrimination; employer compliance; privacy; and verification system usability and employer burden.


Date of Report: May 9, 2011
Number of Pages: 22
Order Number: R40446
Price: $29.95

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