Posted on 03/28/2008 9:40:46 AM PDT by Tennessee Nana
What would you call a federal regulation that gives U.S. employers no choice but to fire workers if they are unable to resolve discrepancies over records kept by the Social Security Administration and the Social Security number submitted on an employee's Form W-2?
The government calls it a "no-match" regulation. But many Texas employers call it just plain extreme.
By authorizing the "no-match" regulation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security presumes that employers are criminals unless they can demonstrate otherwise. If employers cannot resolve a name or number discrepancy involving an employee in 93 days, they will have to terminate workers or face civil and criminal penalties for employing undocumented workers.
Employers will have to spend billions of dollars during the coming years to interpret and comply with this draconian regulation. In Texas, if you examine the previous years' employment numbers and Social Security's own estimates on faulty numbers, employers could be forced to seek protection from prosecution by terminating as many as 750,000 workers. This amounts to almost 10 percent of our state's total work force, and the impact on Texans and the Texas economy would be devastating.
The regulation originally was scheduled to take effect last September, but U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer blocked implementation, finding that "the federal government's proposal to disseminate no-match letters affecting more than 8 million workers will, under the mandated time line, result in the termination of employment to lawfully employed workers."
The judge also found that "if allowed to proceed, the mailing of no-match letters, accompanied by DHS' guidance letter, would result in irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers."
Homeland Security issued a rewritten regulation March 26, but the end result remains the same.
Discrepancies between workers' names and Social Security numbers often result from clerical errors or name changes because of marriage or divorce. Because these types of errors have nothing to do with immigration or work authorization, an employer cannot assume that receipt of a no-match letter implies anything about the employee's legal status. Of the estimated 17.8 million errors in Social Security's database, 12.7 million (or more than 70 percent) pertain to native-born U.S. citizens.
Employers are not notified of every mismatched record. The SSA notifies only those employers who have mismatched information on more than 10 W-2 forms, and only if the total number of mismatched forms is more than 0.5 percent of the total forms presented by the employer. Businesses could be liable for mismatches of which they have no knowledge.
The new regulation also presents employers with a dilemma of threatened prosecution by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement versus lawsuits for potential violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects all workers -- regardless of immigration status -- from discrimination in employment.
The Bush administration claims that the no-match regulation will discourage future illegal immigration. In reality, it will jeopardize the employment of about 10 percent of the legal work force in the United States.
So what's the alternative? Rather than treating employers as adversaries in the immigration debate, the administration should view employers as partners in economic growth and job creation. They should suspend the no-match effort until alternative, more accurate databases are in place and employers have an efficient way to correct data errors and to obtain status confirmation.
U.S. Reps. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, and Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, have an alternative that deserves consideration. Their New Employee Verification Act would replace the federal government's current employer verification process with an electronic verification system that would use the state "new-hire" reporting process, which is currently used for child support enforcement. This would allow employers to confirm the work eligibility of citizens through the Social Security database and that of noncitizens through the DHS database.
The Bush administration should be working to improve the economy instead of using a ridiculous regulation to make it impossible for businesses to operate and workers to work. It is vital that Congress stop no-match before it goes through and replace it with a more effective solution.
Bill Hammond is president of the Texas Association of Business and a board member of Texas Employers for Immigration Reform.
We can find 'em
LOL
PING
"Fraud Prevention"?
Just a guess.
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
That question did not require a sensible answer...
:)
...methinks 'Bill Hammond' is an employer of illegal aliens. 'Immigration Reform' is just code-speak for "we don' neeeed no steeeenkin fence!"
The law.
Bill Hammonds apears to be a powerful/connected Lobbyist for Illegal Workers/Slave Trade...heavy supporter of Amnasty and all things related....$$$ whore!
Allow, not require. So the problem is that employers don't want to verify?
Summary of "new, improved" employment verification bill
Creates an alternate, voluntary Secure Electronic Employment Verification System (SEEVS) to verify employees’ identity and work eligibility and to “lock” that identity once verified.
Note, voluntary. Hey, how about making the federal income tax voluntary?
If the above is true, I suggest we re-examine that Act and amend it to NOT include illegal immigrants.
I hope I don't know anyone that is a big of a lier as Bill Hammond, But this unprovable statement proves that Bill Hammond is a first class lier.
I seriously doubt anyone with legal identity is the least bit worried about this....
Thanks, Nana, Ping!
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