Making E-Verify Mandatory: The Perfect Storm
In addition to the controversy over the ARRP position on Social Security, there are other issues affecting retirement that surface via immigration legislation. Scott Hochberg has given Angry Bear permission to post his article from this weekend from Huffington Post. (hat tip coberly)
Making E-Verify Mandatory: The Perfect Storm for Crippling the Social Security Administration and Jeopardizing the Social Safety Net by Scott Hochberg
There has been much recent buzzing about AARP’s ambiguous, half-denied statements about their (new?) willingness to cut Social Security benefits, and rightly so. As the largest membership organization of seniors in the country, AARP’s tactical gamble could be an unfortunate game-changer in any deficit deal negotiated behind closed doors in Washington.
But believe it or not, one of the biggest threats to Social Security this summer could come from an entirely different direction, from an initiative whose main target is not even related to social program spending. I’m talking about E-Verify, a proposed system for curbing the legal employment of every single undocumented worker in America. While seemingly immigration-related, a mandatory E-Verify program could cripple the Social Security Administration (SSA) by concurrently draining already-limited funding while imposing heavy burdens on one of the most efficient government programs in existence. Oh yes, and it would threaten the timely distribution of all new Social Security benefits.
For those not familiar with it, E-Verify is a tool designed to prevent the employment of undocumented workers in the United States. Employers run the personal information of new hires though the E-Verify electronic system, which is connected to the SSA master database of Americans with Social Security numbers. In its developmental stages, the program has been optional for employers, but new legislation proposed by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) would make it mandatory. This would be dubious policy for a number of reasons, and many diverse groups, from the pro-immigrant community to businesses and agricultural companies, have come out against it.
One key message of these groups that is often overlooked is that E-Verify would add significant responsibilities and workload to an agency that is already overworked and underfunded. The Social Security Administration is one of the most efficient government agencies, operating at less than 1 percent overhead costs. Forcing SSA to handle the administrative nightmare of E-Verify is worse than the usual conservative position of “starving the beast” — it is more like starving the beast and making it run a marathon while carrying a 50 lb. backpack. That’s because in addition to drastically increasing the responsibilities SSA would be faced with, the agency is already dealing with massive budget cuts that limit its administrative capacity. There are three compelling lines of argument against mandatory E-Verify:
1. Mandatory E-Verify would cost American workers their jobs and create confusion at SSA.
When E-Verify finds an inconsistency between a name and that person’s work authorization, it issues a “tentative nonconfirmation” (TNC), after which an employee has several days to contact SSA or DHS to correct the error or risk losing their job. Unfortunately, a significant number of these TNCs are issued in error. (Errors are usually due to clerical mistakes from inputting data, especially with hard-to-spell names or ones that have been hyphenated or changed, as well as errors by the workers themselves when filling out government forms.) In 2010, of the 16 million E-verify queries by employers, 128,000 (0.8 percent of the total) required the employee to go to SSA or call DHS to fix the problem. Of those 0.8 percent errors, 0.3 percent were discovered to be in error and were later corrected. But 0.5 percent — over half of all errors — were falsely issued “final nonconfirmations,” essentially forcing their employer to wrongly fire them. 0.3 percent may not sound like very many, but with a total American workforce of 154 million, that translates to over 770,000 jobs lost. (Tyler Moran, Policy Director of the National Immigration Law Center, has a thorough explanation of how many workers would be affected, and why it is so hard for workers to challenge the system.)
So what does this mean for SSA? It translates to an already overburdened staff that now has to deal with hundreds of thousands of extra calls and office visits, sometimes entailing a lengthy review process for individual cases. In 2008, when there were only 7 million E-Verify queries, 88,000 people called the 1-800 number or visited SSA due to E-Verify errors. If the program were mandatory, SSA would have to review 154 million records in the initial implementation period: if the rate of people calling SSA was the same as 2008, that would be nearly 2 million more calls into the agency during that period alone.
2. SSA is already underfunded and overburdened, and cannot afford to take on the consuming and perpetual E-Verify project.
SSA has long been underfunded. Agency administrative expenses alone have been shorted 8 of the last 10 years (compared with the amount it requested of Congress to operate at full capacity). There was a particularly huge cut in 2011, almost a billion dollars below the required level, that was part of the last-minute compromise between Speaker Boehner and the Democrats a few months ago.
Because of those negotiations, SSA has already had to take several measures to limit its regular operations because it simply can’t afford them — many of which (ironically, although perhaps not unintentionally) will increase costs further. For one, last month the agency stopped sending out annual earnings statements to all workers under 65. (Leave aside the fact that they only cost SSA $30 million in 2011, and help millions of Americans with their retirement planning while double-checking that SSA has the correct data for them.) The agency still expects that it will experience increased call volume from confused people wondering why they didn’t get their statements and hoping to confirm their information either in person or on the phone.
E-Verify proponents often claim, in response, that SSA would be funded to keep up with its new responsibilities. While that’s theoretically possible, it’s unlikely, given the Republicans’ current impulse to cut every government program in sight. It’s easy to imagine a scenario whereby SSA is forced to cut even more of its regular operations in order to accommodate the new E-Verify agenda. Critical goals of the agency, such as reducing the unacceptably long backlog for pending claims, would have to be ignored further into the future. Or maybe it was the point all along to cripple the administration of Social Security benefits themselves and attack this extremely popular program through the back door.
3. E-verify would remove millions of taxpayers from the pool that pays into Social Security, thus weakening the solvency of the Trust Fund.
As we’ve seen, the point of E-Verify is to remove illegal workers from legal employment, likely ending their tax contributions to Social Security and other federal revenue streams. This is a wasted opportunity, as any undocumented worker that pays taxes provides a net gain to the system (since they don’t collect benefits). As we all should know by now, undocumented workers are not going to leave the country when E-Verify comes knocking. They fill an important niche in our economy and are here to stay — the only difference is that more of them will be funneled into the underground economy, or miscategorized as (partially tax-exempt) independent contractors. One 2008 bill that would have made E-Verify mandatory without a pathway to legalization would have decreased federal revenue by $22 billion over 10 years.
Of the approximately 8 million undocumented workers, it is estimated that about two-thirds of them pay payroll taxes into the Social Security Trust Fund, accounting for $12 billion in 2007. (The Trust Fund is the total pot of surplus money paid into Social Security that is not immediately sent out as benefits, now totaling $2.7 trillion.) In sum, undocumented workers have contributed somewhere between $120 and $240 billion to the Trust Fund, accounting for 5.4 to 10.7 percent of its total assets. In addition, these workers tend to be younger than the average American, so the impact of their tax contributions will grow as the Baby Boomers retire and the percentage of seniors in America rises from 12 percent to 18 percent. According to the chief actuary of SSA, without the contributions of undocumented workers, the Trust Fund would run out of assets six years earlier than estimated in the 2010 Trustees Report. That’s staggering.
According to most experts, mandatory E-Verify wouldn’t affect those who already receive Social Security benefits, because current beneficiaries receive their checks through a mostly automatic process. But this much is sure: nearly everyone else would be affected. It is anyone’s guess how SSA would respond to being buried with new caseloads at a time when, even pre-E-Verify, “unprecedented workloads combined with declining budgets [have] damaged [the agency’s] service delivery,” according to the SSA Commissioner himself. I’ll leave it to the immigration experts to suggest how E-Verify needs to be improved before making it mandatory — but for now at least, mandatory E-Verify is the surest way to threaten the social safety net with paralysis. Let’s hope that if E-Verify makes it through the Senate without comprehensive reform attached, Obama will roll out the veto on this one.
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Scott Hochberg
I can’t agree with advocating a policy that does the wrong thing for the wrong reason. IE, ignore existing immigration law just so we can keep the free money from the undoc workers. If E-verify is broken, fix it. If we need the money, come up with some legislation that fixes immigration laws.
Anyway, isn’t the party line that undoc workers are taking jobs that Americans would otherwise do? If that’s true, then it would be revenue neutral or revenue positive.
Double anyway, isn’t the real problem with undoc workers that they are working under the table with NO taxes paid?
I can’t agree with advocating a policy that does the wrong thing for the wrong reason. IE, ignore existing immigration law just so we can keep the free money from the undoc workers. If E-verify is broken, fix it. If we need the money, come up with some legislation that fixes immigration laws.
Anyway, isn’t the party line that undoc workers are taking jobs that Americans would otherwise do? If that’s true, then it would be revenue neutral or revenue positive.
Double anyway, isn’t the real problem with undoc workers that they are working under the table with NO taxes paid?
I can’t agree with advocating a policy that does the wrong thing for the wrong reason. IE, ignore existing immigration law just so we can keep the free money from the undoc workers. If E-verify is broken, fix it. If we need the money, come up with some legislation that fixes immigration laws.
Anyway, isn’t the party line that undoc workers are taking jobs that Americans would otherwise do? If that’s true, then it would be revenue neutral or revenue positive.
Double anyway, isn’t the real problem with undoc workers that they are working under the table with NO taxes paid?
(Sorry for the triple post, I only hit the button once….?)
(Sorry for the triple post, I only hit the button once….?)
(Sorry for the triple post, I only hit the button once….?)
Reading this, just boggles the mind! Here the Congress types are doing their collective best to destroy the country from within, which I might add, they certainly seem to be doing a fine job of it! I’d be willing to bet the farm/ranch that at the rate they are going, by 2020 this country will be in the poor house until the end, as we know it.
Phil
The sad thing is that you can’t avoid advocating the wrong policy that does the wrong thing for the wrong reasons. I believe that Hochberg makes a good case that E-verify is the wrong policy for the wrong reasons.
Your idea that not creating the E verify system “ignores existing immigration law” is logically tenuous. This is a new law. The existing law was not being ignored.
As for the party line… like most party lines, that’s just another lie created for the purpose of getting votes.
Phil
If you’re still on the same machine that the first two comments were made from just go back and hit the delete button under each redundant post.
So now immigration reform is a threat to Social Security? Please!!!!!
You can’t control immigration without social security numbers, hence the involvement, and you don’t think additional staffing would be forthcoming? If you understand the term “mission creep” if anything this is good for the SSA.
Scaring seniors into opposing immigration reform.
I think you have the wrong impression of how undocumented workers are paid. Most are hired up front using counterfeit or stolen ID documents. Easy to come by and not even very expensive depending on the quality. So, the employer just flags folks through and deducts payroll taxes as usual.
(Problem comes when the wages are reported to SSA and cannot be posted to an existing earnings record. There are billions of dollars worth of unposted wages. But, taxes have been paid on all these earnings. The number of people who work exclusively under the table is unknown. My experience is that it’s not as many as work up front.)
As for “jobs Americans won’t do”, sometimes, sometimes not. There are plenty of undocumented truck drivers, factory workers, household and other service workers have never picked a berry or pruned a grape vine. These are jobs which are abundant in a normal economy but because arduous duties or bad working conditions turn over frequently.
Wages for this work can be kept very low because undoc workers will work for less than Americans. But, in hard times like these, undocumented workers go home. Reverse immigration is the trend now and has been for the past several years. The effect undocs have on these jobs varies in different locations and in different economic cycles. Right now, it just depends on where you are how much work is available in these categories.
And, finally–we get to keep the FICA payroll taxes of undocumented workers. Wrong. Once a person returns to his country of origin, s/he may apply for SS benefits and receive them abroad at any American embassy or consulate. He just can’t receive SS benefits inside the US. This is well known and is commonly done. Also, even if the worker never receives a dime in SS benefits, his wife/widow and any children legally here can receive benefits. SSA has a large component which processes such claims.
The idea of requiring some kind of verification on everyone who applies for a job has been around for a long time. There is nothing unconstitutional or otherwise illegal about it. Hochberg’s article concerns the effect of implementing such a law on SSA. He says it would overwhelm the agency. And, given current budget cuts, I agree. NancyO
sammy, aren’t you outraged that American citizens would be subjected to the same ID verification as illegal aliens? This law applies to everyone, not just “obvious illegals”. /snark/ I would be happy to explain the impact of this new requirement in detail. But, to make it short and sweet, it would need maybe 3 or 4K new employees to handle it. The current budget just got cut and next year’s is gonna be less. So, this is one new workload SSA can’t handle and it could well overwhelm SSA. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. NancyO
Same method they use against women and their rights. They sure know how to destroy, and that is their aim, they want to destroy, like we had to burn it in order to save it.
We could have real good and effective government if they used their genius to govern, instead they are wrecking the nation.
Sammy
why is it that everything you believe in contributes to making life miserable for people. if i remember correctly, your argument against welfare is that the poor are too lazy to work. now you are saying it’s because illegal immigrants have taken their jobs away.
personally, i think it comes from a bad heart. once you have decided that “the other” is a subhuman who is conspiring to take some of your money, you can lay awake at night thinking of clever plans to stop them. and the fact that all your clever plans involve hurting people… well, heh, heh, they shoulda thought of that before they decided to be bad… or poor, same thing.
sammy, I am the wrong person to preach to about SSA! All I can say is that SSA’s mission doesn’t creep, it mushrooms. And, no, they won’t provide any more people. They never do! NancyO
Well it is possible that Congress will pass a new mandate without funding additional staffing. But that will be the fault of the legislators, not E-verify.
coberly,
Compare my original comment to your response. You are getting more and more delusional.
Sammy
at least make some kind of argument. just calling me delusional doesn’t really give me any reason to believe it isn’t you who is delusional.
Sammy
I see, “E-verify” has a mind and soul. nothing to do with the legislators that passed it.
Lys
it is their intention to wreck the nation. these geniuses actually believe “government IS the problem.”
…unless it’s THEIR government, of course. These “small government” “starve the beast” people are very fond of using government to pursue their own ends and to regulate or criminalize personal individual behaviors that they disapprove of. They’re also very happy use government to borrow money and pass it along to their supporters, too.
From the comments here, few have considered the impacts. NanO is concerned about the increased workload the SS employees will undergo. Lys thinks its the same as women’s rights???
This is how Wiki describes E-Verify: “E-Verify is an Internet-based, free program run by the United States government that compares information from an employee’s Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 to data from U.S. government records. If the information matches, that employee is eligible to work in the United States. If there’s a mismatch, E-Verify alerts the employer and the employee is allowed to work while he or she resolves the problem; they must contact the appropriate agency to resolve the mismatch within eight federal government work days from the referral date.[1] The program is operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in partnership with Social Security Administration.”
Notice anything interesting? Who is it that already runs E-Verify? That’s right, the SSA. Notice anything else? That’s right the” E-” stands for electronic, an euphemism for automated.
Finally, anyone realize how these programs work? In their inception they may be labor intensive, but in this case it is mostly automated, so even that is mitigated. As it is successful the work force adjust with processes and technology improvements, but the real impact is that fewer illegals will apply. As they realize the likelihood that they will not pass E-Verify and stop applying.
So, instead of the doom and gloom prognostications the good of reduced illegals taking jobs from Americans will off set any added surge in workload. C’mon folks, heavy on emotion and light on logic commenting adds little to the discussion.
Somewhat surprised that the OP point number (3) essentially advocates stealing from illegal workers, i.e., knowingly accepting their FICA contributions to fund benefits for citizens while at the same time knowing that those illegal workers cannot collect benefits.
CoRev
while you can be counted on to add a little fantasy to the discussion. a couple of people who know something describe a problem. co rev looks it up on wiki and from his depth of experience tells us a magic fairy will make the problem go away. no need to think about this. no need to think at all.
Put Social Security back into it’s own fund (or lock box) where it belongs and out of the general fund. Never meant to be there.As long as the government feels they can continue to borrow (steal) money from this cash cow they will continue to do so.
Misty
Actually SS is in its own fund, and there is nothing wrong with borrowing the money,,, that’s all normal money and banking.
But it doesn’t matter, the liars have got the people so confused that cutting their benefits is going to be like taking candy from a baby.
Scott Hochberg cited the testimony of Tyler Moran at the April 14, 2011 E-Verify hearing of the Subcommittee on Social Security, U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. Interestingly, Hochberg failed to cite any of the testimony provided by a commissioner of the Social Security Administration at the same subcommittee hearing. The reasons are obvious.
Here are some Social Security Administration E-Verify facts presented by the SSA commissioner that Hochberg conveniently omitted from his scare tactic article:
Testimony of Marianna LaCanfora, Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Office of Retirement and Disability Policy, Social Security Administration
April 14, 2011
EXCERPTS:
“The support we provide to DHS for E-Verify is not related to the benefit programs we administer; therefore, DHS reimburses us for all costs we incur in support of its program.”
“At the same time, DHS also changed the process for contesting tentative non-confirmations based on citizenship mismatches. Under this process, naturalized citizens who receive a tentative non-confirmation can call DHS directly to resolve the issue. While new hires still have the option of resolving the mismatch in person at one of our field offices, this new process provides better, more convenient service to the public and helps reduce the number of visitors coming to our field offices to change their records.”
“In 2009, we completed a major improvement to our systems that support E-Verify. We isolated E-Verify workloads from our mission critical workloads. No other workloads run in this isolated E-Verify environment; therefore, use of the E-Verify system does not affect our mission critical workloads, and increases in our mission critical workloads do not affect the operation of E-Verify.”
“The more robust design of this system increases our capacity to handle E-Verify queries. At DHS’ request, we designed the system to accommodate 60 million queries a year because United States employers hire about 60 million workers each year. In time, we may need additional capacity, but we expect our systems will be able to handle potential expansions, provided we receive necessary resources and lead times. This systems environment will help us provide prompt, efficient, and accurate service to those seeking employment.”
“We continue to make improvements to support the E-Verify program. This month, we are adding enhancements to our computer systems to help us identify individuals who are visiting our field offices due to an E-Verify tentative non-confirmation. This new functionality will help us better serve the public by ensuring that our employees update EV-STAR, and thus E-Verify, with the most current case information. These enhancements demonstrate our continued commitment to help DHS improve E-Verify.”
“Funding For E-Verify”
“DHS reimburses SSA for all operating costs related to the E-Verify system, including our systems maintenance costs and the costs of assisting new hires who visit our field offices and call our teleservice centers to contest a tentative non-confirmation.”
“We understand that there are several proposals to extend and expand the E-Verify program. However, we will be able to successfully support an expansion of the program only if we are fully reimbursed for our E-Verify costs. SSA would need sufficient resources, time, and a multi-year phased-in approach to prepare for any additional work […]
MG
“we may need to add additional capacity should the program be mandatory for all current employees…”
as usual you begin by impugning the motives of the person trying to tell the story, and you end up by getting the story wrong.
The reasons are obvious.
coberly – “as usual you begin by impugning the motives of the person trying to tell the story, and you end up by getting the story wrong. The reasons are obvious.”
Scott Hochberg did not mention any of the SSA commissioner’s testimony. Hochberg did not acknowledge that testimony by a SSA representative was provided to Congress on the subject of E-Verify, let alone testimony provided at the same subcommittee hearing that Hochberg identified in one reference in his article.
That is an interesting oversight considering Scott Hochberg’s claim that “making E-Verify mandatory” is “the perfect storm for crippling the Social Security Administration and jeopardizing the Social Safety Net.”
The SSA commissioner stated on April 14, “At DHS’ request, we designed the system to accommodate 60 million queries a year because United States employers hire about 60 million workers each year.” The SSA is already prepared to handle annual new hires at the national level, well beyond the SSA E-Verify current workload. The SSA commissioner explained, quite appropriatedly, “In time, we may need additional capacity, but we expect our systems will be able to handle potential expansions, provided we receive necessary resources and lead times.” The SSA commissioner explained how the E-Verify funding works, “DHS reimburses SSA for all operating costs related to the E-Verify system, including our systems maintenance costs and the costs of assisting new hires who visit our field offices and call our teleservice centers to contest a tentative non-confirmation.”
This is sworn testimony provided by a commissioner of the Social Security Administration to a Congressional subcommittee for which a public record exists. Yet, the author of the article that you recommended to Dan at Angry Bear decided to exclude any consideration of such Social Security Administration facts and testimony in writing his article. And you now want to apparently endorse the author’s exclusion of Social Security Administration testimony on April 14? Talk about misleading the Angry Bear readers…
Another Jew advocating open borders in the land of the goyim. They are as common as dirt, and just as principled considering they always seek to keep Israel a Jews only state.
Any of you that think that undoc workers are taking jobs from Americans…you are soooo ungodly mistaken. I challenge any of you to find a white, american man or woman that will go pick tomatos, peppers, lettuce and oranges from a field. It won’t happen! I challenge you to find a white, american man or woman that will go hang drywall all day for $9.00 and hour. Undoc workers are paying into social security and will never reep the benefits. The money goes straight into the system….do you hear them complaining????????????? NO, they have money to feed their children and send back to their families…SO YOU TELL ME HOW THIS IS HURTING US????
I would love to know the statistics on the undoc workers that leave the country and file for thier benefits!!!!!!!!! There is NO WAY that amount comes close to what is paid in and the government keeps! I have not read far enought to know your background, but how many undoc workers do you know????
Are you serious??? Did you read the article??? We aren’t even really worried about “human workload” at this point….they are saying the entire SS comp system can NOT handle the workload. He states that between now and 2013, if there is no money budgeted out for upgrades to the system, it will crash…..