Bush: verify employees' immigration status.

President Bush has ordered federal contractors to verify the immigration status of all employees hired to work on future contracts.

Under the dune 6 executive order, contractors will be required to use the Homeland Security Department's Internet-based E-Verify system to check each employee's identification against Social Security records. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the system clears 99.5% of legal workers "essentially instantaneously," but critics have charged that the records are often wrong.

This is the first time any large group of employers has been required to use E-Verify. It is voluntary for other businesses, but a few states have mandated its use.

"It is always embarrassing, frankly, when we have these periodic operations in which we discover illegal workers working on federal projects paid for by federal money that is ultimately paid for by the taxpayer," Chertoff said at a June 9 news conference in Washington. "So we are going to make sure we finish getting our own house in order first, even as we work to continue to make sure that others in the private sector use this system."

The presidential order states: "Where a contractor assigns illegal aliens to work on Federal contracts, the enforcement of Federal immigration laws imposes a direct risk of disruption, delay, and increased expense in Federal contracting. Such contractors are less dependable procurement sources, even if they do not knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers."

Bush directed the Federal Acquisition Regulation Councils to immediately publish a notice of proposed rulemaking and ask for public comments within 60 days. The effective date of the new policy was not stated, but Chertoff said it would "be up and running later this year."

Industry groups were taken by surprise. Several said they have questions about the reliability of E-Verify.

E-Verify has come under attack both from employers and advocates for immigrants. They say the Social Security database is chock-full of errors, leading companies to fire or refuse to hire workers who are legal. Critics also say the system cannot catch illegal immigrants who use genuine documents stolen or borrowed from legal workers.

E-Verify is "a system that doesn't really work," said the Human Resources Initiative for a Legal Workforce, a coalition of business groups that is pressing Congress to mandate a better verification system. It said forcing federal contractors to use the system will overwhelm it and the Social Security Administration.

The Homeland Security Department says more than 69,000 employers have used E-Verify so far this year to check the status of 4 million workers. In a June 10 report, the Government Accountability Office said about 92% of queries "confirm within seconds that the employee is work authorized," but about 7% cannot be confirmed immediately. The auditors found that most mistaken denials of a worker's legal status "occur because employees' citizenship or other information, such as name changes, is not up to date in the [Social Security] database, generally because individuals do not request that SSA make these updates."

"This order is designed to promote economy and efficiency in Federal Government procurement," Bush said. "Stability and dependability are important elements of economy and efficiency. A contractor whose workforce is less stable will be less likely to produce goods and services economically and efficiently than a contractor whose workforce is more stable."

(See the executive order at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/ 2008/06/20080609-2.html.)