How To Do Workplace Enforcement

We need a better system for verifying whether a new hire is legally authorized to work in the United States. There is already an excellent model for a system of immediate workplace verification.



The system is on a federal government website called "(SCRA) Servicemembers Civil Relief Act."
https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/scra/owa/home

(If the web address has changed, just google the website name that is in blue text).


This system already exists now. The existence of this system demonstrates that effective workplace verification is feasible and is essentially a matter of data entry.

Imagine this system adapted to verification of whether a person is legally authorized to work in the United States:

1) Enter name
2) Enter Green Card, Social Security, or visa number.

"Yes" Response: "This name and working permit number match those of a person authorized to work in the United States. However, the person in front of you must match the person in the pictures below." And below, there will be two pictures (side and front) of the person, together with any identifying marks.

If the pictures do not match the actual person in front the employer, the person may not be hired.

Very simple! The big advantage over the website based verification system is that employers will know immediately whether the employee's employment eligibility is questionable. Currently, in most cases, all employer can do is accept the new hire's (potentially fraudulent) documents and send them into the federal government.

The internet based verification system should virtually eliminate the use of fraudulent Green Cards and Social Security cards. The issuer of the fraudulent documentation would have to hack into the federal government database and replace the actual pictures of the individual those of the person who is trying to steal the identity.

Privacy concerns are minimal, because the user must already have the identifying information. The only additional information the user gets is whether the person is authorized to work, and the person's picture, which is merely the image of the face that person presents to the world everyday, so it is not private.

"No" Response: "This person is not in the database of persons legally authorized to work in the United States. Because there is a chance this result is in error due to a data entry problem, you may only employ this person provisionally, pending a manual recheck by the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If upon manual recheck, the employee is proven to be unauthorized, that person shall be subject to arrest for violation of federal law."

This way, the federal government will only need to recheck those who insist that they should be in the database, and those who insist wrongly are subject to arrest, so by and large, only the innocent will insist.

Five years from the inception date of the system, a person who is not in the database will be barred from employment until the problem is cleared up. This is because there will be a low number of errors once the system is up and running. Everybody will be able to check for an error before they even show up to look for a job. Employees subject to an error will be able to clear things up through use of the phone, internet, and a visit to a local government office.

Well, you say, you don't trust the federal government to have a workable system. It could work if it were contracted out to a company such as Amazon.com or Google. These companies run MASSIVE e-commerce sites that have never been substantially hacked and are demonstrated to be capable of massively high volume.