Fact of the Week: 07/24/08

Thursday, July 24, 2008

It’s Time for Congress to Create an Employment Verification System That Works

 

 Fact Check

 

Why is DHS Bashing Human Resource Experts for Demanding a More Effective Answer to Illegal Employment?

 
•    The Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary Stewart Baker recently questioned the motives of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) by criticizing the organization for opposing a long-term extension of E-Verify and for supporting a more effective, mandatory solution to worksite enforcement.

•    The fact is that SHRM and hundreds of thousands of U.S. employers across all sectors of the economy want to be able to accurately verify that the people they hire are authorized to work.  For that reason, SHRM and members of the HR Initiative for a Legal Workforce have endorsed legislation designed to create a more accurate and efficient employment verification system for mandatory use by all U.S. employers. 

•    DHS has characterized these efforts as an attempt to kill employment verification altogether.  This is not the goal of the HR Initiative coalition and not the goal of the hundreds of thousands of Human Resource professionals we represent.  In truth, the HR Initiative coalition and SHRM strongly support legislation that would provide law-abiding employers with a far more effective and reliable employment verification system. 

Click here for the facts in SHRM’s response to Assistant Secretary Baker.

 

The H.R. Initiative for a Legal Workforce supports legislation that will help ensure a legal workforce by creating an electronic employment verification system that protects workers, and makes employers part of the solution to provide effective worksite enforcement.

 

To learn more, visit www.legal-workforce.org.

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The Human Resource Initiative for a Legal Workforce (www.legal-workforce.org) represents human resource professionals in thousands of small and large U.S. employers representing every sector of the American economy.  The HR Initiative and its members support H.R. 5515, the New Employee Verification Act as the best way to improve the current process of employment verification.  NEVA will create a secure, efficient and reliable system that will ensure a legal workforce and help prevent unauthorized employment, a root cause of illegal immigration.