The recent raid in Postville, Iowa, resulted in hundreds of undocumented (illegal) workers and their families to be rounded up, handcuffed and herded into detainee centers.  A very sad situation.  Employers and our elected officials MUST develop a method to verify employment eligibility.  Congress is considering using the “E-Verify” system which is a make-shift and unreliable system.  A better approach is NEVA “New Employee Verification Act”, H.R. 5515.  The lynchpin for true immigration reform is Employment Verification.  Under the H.R. 5515 bill, employers would use the state “new hire” reporting process which is currently utilized for child support enforcement to confirm the work eligibility of new hires.  The Social Security Administration database would be used for U.S. citizens and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) database would be used for non-U.S. citizens.  The bill would also create a voluntary biometrics option that employers could choose to use.  Susan R. Meisinger, CEO of SHRM, is working with U.S. legislators for a more secure, accurate, and reliable system.  Hopefully, someday soon, the sad images of workers in handcuffs will be only in the history books and no longer on the front page of newspapers.   

This entry was posted on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 9:54 am. Please comment or trackback.