U.S. contractors must verify staff

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By Audrey Hudson

Federal contractors now are required to check the citizenship and legal status of their employees by using a free federal service that some business groups and state lawmakers have criticized as unreliable.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Monday that President Bush has signed an executive order directing federal contractors to use E-Verify, an Internet system that can confirm a worker's legal status within seconds.

Federal agencies already are required to use the verification system.

"Where a contractor assigns illegal aliens to work on federal contracts, the enforcement of federal immigration laws imposes a direct risk of disruption, delay, and increased expense in federal contracting," Mr. Bush said in Executive Order 12989, which he signed Friday. "Such contractors are less dependable procurement sources, even if they do not knowingly hire or knowingly continue to employ unauthorized workers."

E-Verify is operated by the Social Security Administration and Citizenship and Immigration Services, and it is already used by nearly 70,000 employers enrolled in the program.

More than 4 million queries have been made this year, and 99.5 percent were automatically cleared, according to the Homeland Security Department.

As a condition of receiving future contracts, federal contractors will be required to sign an agreement to use the system.

E-Verify is contentious among some business groups and state lawmakers who question its reliability and the accuracy of information in the database. In addition, civil libertarians have said system errors will lead to discrimination and job losses by U.S. citizens and legal residents who are wrongly identified as illegal workers.

Last year, the Illinois General Assembly enacted a law to prohibit employers from enrolling in E-Verify, but agreed to suspend the law from taking effect if certain changes were made to eliminate false-positive results.

The Oklahoma Chamber of Commerce, which opposes the program, has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a new state law there that requires online verification of workers' immigration status.