Over 500,000 Companies Now Participating in E-Verify
Author: Melissa A. Silver, XpertHR Legal Editor
January 29, 2014
The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that E-Verify hit a milestone of over a half million companies using the free web-based system to electronically verify the information provided by new hires on the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.
Lori Scialabba, Acting Director of USCIS, stated that "Since it was established, E-Verify has experienced exponential growth, increased accuracy and high customer-satisfaction ratings." The USCIS reported that "During FY 2013, employers used E-Verify more than 25 million times."
According to the USCIS, when employers use E-Verify to verify their employees' work authorization, they receive results within seconds. In fact, 98.8 percent of work-authorized employees are confirmed instantly or within 24 hours. In those cases, no further action is required of the employee or the employer.
The USCIS continually enhances the E-Verify system. Examples of USCIS's improvements to E-Verify in 2013 include the following:
- Releasing revised Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) for E-Verify browser users and new MOUs for users accessing E-Verify through web services, which are customized to each type of E-Verify access method and are simpler to read and understand.
- Instituting security measures to help prevent identity fraud during the E-Verify process.
- Streamlining the E-Verify process by combining and replacing the tentative nonconfirmation notice and referral into one document entitled a further action notice.
Interestingly, the CATO Institute, a public policy research organization, released a report of the results it received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, which revealed the number of days it took the government to resolve E-Verify tentative nonconfirmation (TNC) results in 2012. In particular, according to CATO's report the Social Security Administration had an average turnaround of 3.42 business days after the TNC was contested and the Department of Homeland Security had an average turnaround of 6.01 business days.
Despite the reported delays in 2012, E-Verify users gave the program a score of 86 out of 100 on the 2012 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey.