Cato Study Finds E-Verify “Ineffective, Intrusive, Expensive”

Cato Institute is a non-profit public policy research foundation with headquartered in Washington, D.C. Cato undertakes an extensive publications program dealing with the complete spectrum of public policy issues.

The Cato study on E-Verify found that the Electronic Employment Verification (EEV) is ineffective, intrusive, expensive. E-Verify, "has many practical and technical problems-to say nothing of the question of whether it is appropriate for a free country-and would still fail to prevent illegal immigration" says Jim Harper, Cato's director of Information Policy Studies and author of "Electronic Employment Verification: Franz Kafka's Solution to Illegal Immigration." To be done effectively, EEV would require an expensive national ID system which would greatly impinge upon the privacy of American citizens. "The things necessary to make a system like this really impervious to forgery and fraud would convert it from an identity system into a cradle-to-grave biometric tracking system," writes the author.

This would increase the value of committing identity fraud, and the amount and type of information stored in the databases would expose Americans to grave security risks.
EEV would make applying for jobs a hassle for all American citizens and it would effectively deny some law-abiding individuals the ability to work. A study by the SSA Inspector General revealed an error rate of 4.1 percent in the data used to administer the Basic Pilot program, now renamed E-Verify. At that rate, 1 in every 25 new legitimate hires would receive a "tentative nonconfirmation," requiring the individual to go through a burdensome process to seek permission to work from the Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security.

"The cost of such a program, including the preliminary national ID system, is estimated to be $17 billion, $11 billion of which would fall directly on state governments. The remaining $6 billion would be shouldered by American citizens as they struggle to prove their right to work in this country."