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A section in the Senate's bipartisan immigration overhaul bill that would require employers to check the immigration status of their workers could be finalized as early as Tuesday and is rapidly gaining support from industry groups and immigrant advocates alike.

Title 3 of a revised bill that Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., plans to bring to the Senate floor would establish an electronic employment verification eligibility system under which employers would be required to verify that workers they hire are legally able to be employed.

The system would also give the Homeland Security Department access to information in Social Security Administration databases, something that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recently said is critical for investigations. Crafting Title 3 are Senate Finance Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Senate Finance ranking member Max Baucus, D-Mont., along with Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Barack Obama, D-Ill.

Industry groups and immigrant advocates are throwing their support behind the emerging Senate proposal, as opposed to requirements in the House border security bill passed last December. "We don't like the House bill at all," said Laura Foote Reiff, a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig and co-leader of the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition, a group of businesses and trade associations.

Major differences between the House and Senate proposals include compliance deadlines, employer penalties, privacy protections, redress processes for correcting errors, and employer liability protections, Reiff said.

For example, the House bill would require employers to verify the immigration status of all their workers. The Senate version would only require employers to do checks on newly hired workers, sparing from scrutiny any illegal aliens already in the workforce.

The House bill also would place a cap on how much employers could be fined for knowingly employing illegal immigrants. That limit would be $40,000 per illegal alien for repeat offenders. The Senate version would cap fines at $20,000 for repeat offenders.

Aides to House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., a key architect of the House bill, said the Senate is being too lenient on employers and would provide amnesty to illegal immigrants if they are already employed. "The Senate isn't requiring current employees to be checked and that's a big loophole," one aide said.

Developing an employee verification system that can work on a mass scale is an enormous task, said Marshall Fitz, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The House would require Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to expand the Basic Pilot program, which is a system that employers use on a voluntary basis to check the immigration status of their workers. Only about 6,200 employers now use the program.

But the Government Accountability Office identified several weaknesses in the program in an August 2005 report, concluding that it "may not be able to complete timely verifications if the number of employers using the program significantly increased." Fitz said, "The real concern is that unless or until they're able to get their databases accurately updated and corrected ... it seems unlikely that we could have a seamless transition into a broad expansion of this program."

COMMENTS

• I am all for immigration and believe that the laws that generate illegal immigration are ridiculous and never should have been implemented. If we had these laws a century ago there only would be illegal immigrants in the United States. However, I do believe we should return to the military draft and that immigrants who want to become citizens should be drafted into the military for two years of service. The VA benefits after service would help them to get education and housing and health care without just handing it to them as is done today. Taxpayer Posted May 15, 2006 8:21 AM
• Dear Editor: As a legal immigrant who used to prepare amnesty and other applications, I would like to warm Americans not to be misled again by Congress. "Comprehensive" immigration reform that includes amnesty did not work in 1986 and will never work. The law passed in 1986 granted amnesty to 3 million illegal aliens, but most provisions in that law to curb illegal immigration have been ignored. Consequently, the illegal alien population in the U.S. has at least quadrupled. Should amnesty be granted again, most provisions to secure our borders will be ignored again! Congress should first prove to Americans that they can secure our borders for at least three years. (A handful of Minutemen were able to drastically curb illegal crossings a year ago by stationing at the Arizona border.) In the meantime, immigration laws should be enforced. Most illegal aliens will leave if they cannot survive economically. Congress can reassess the situation after three years. President Bush and amnesty advocates in Congress should heed this: If 12 million illegal aliens were granted amnesty and naturalized, they could add within years tens of millions more people to the United States through birth here and immigration of their extended families who vote, use energy, need health care and other social services. In recent weeks, massive demonstrations across the United States with many protestors waving Mexican flags, pressuring the United States with immigration demands identical to Mexico have clearly shown that Mexico is using both legal and illegal migration to strongly influence American policies, our future elections and to extend the Mexican nation. Sincerely, Yeh Ling-Ling Executive Director, Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America 1904 Franklin Street, Suite 517 Oakland, CA 94612 Phone: (510) 835-5017 www.diversityalliance.org GovExec.com reader Posted May 9, 2006 4:20 PM