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Opinion: E-Verify: New law, new lawsuit?

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Among the final stack of bills signed by Gov. Jerry Brown this month was a measure that will bar local cities and counties from requiring local businesses to use E-Verify, a federal database, to check that all new hires are authorized to work.

The E-Verify program allows employers to check a new hire’s name against databases operated by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. The program has come under fire because if fails to detect identity theft. Also, the databases misidentify slightly less than 1% of legal workers as unauthorized to work. Such workers then have eight days to sort out the problem.

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Currently, E-Verify is voluntary for the vast majority of businesses in California, though a handful of cities have adopted local ordinances, including Lancaster and Escondido. It’s unclear what comes next for those cities with mandatory E-Verify laws. It will be interesting to see if the new law inspires any legal challenges.

What do you think?

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--Sandra Hernandez

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