If you have been living underneath a rock or you have your head stuck in the sand trying to get away from this economy then you may have not heard of E-Verify.  E-Verify is an online system that allows you to determine employment eligibility of new hires.

The federal court has ruled that federal contractors with contracts of $100,000 or more awarded on or after September 8, 2009 must use E-Verify. E-Verify is pretty straight forward and is included as part of our services with Employer Ease Payroll. However, I am not going to talk about E-Verify, but discuss some of the ramifications that will probably come out of it and liability issues that employers may face.

Remember, that this is a national database using information from the Social Security Administration.  They themselves acknowledge that they have an error rate of over 12%. If someone has more than one first or last name, that error rate goes up to 40%.  Remember that not all cultures and ethnic groups have the same name format as others.  Simply put, you could be disqualifying someone due to an error.  Make sure if you are an employer you understand the laws of reporting mismatches.

E-Verify could turn into a discrimination tool without meaning too. What does that mean? If there are certain cultures or ethnic groups that have two first or last names or hyphenated names, could create a disparate impact to certain ethnic groups only because of inadequate technology not because they are ineligible.  We will see how this plays out in the next few months.

If you have questions with this or need help please give Employer Ease a call and we can help.