Friday, April 4, 2008

"You're fired!"

"You're fired!"

Those are the words that millions of Americans could hear if Congress passes the SAVE Act.

The SAVE Act would require every employer in the U.S. to use so-called "electronic employment verification," cross-checking all current and potential employees' citizenship status against databases that the government itself knows are filled with errors and inaccuracies.

And what if the Social Security Administration (SSA) or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) get it wrong and can't verify a person's citizenship or right to work using their buggy database? Tough luck. That person is out of a job, with no right to appeal. This is unacceptable, and un-constitutional.

Tell your representative you oppose any bill with electronic employment verification.

The SSA estimates its records contain at least 17.8 million errors, of which 12.7 million involve U.S. citizens. Bills with mandatory employment verification, including the SAVE Act (H.R. 4088), contain no assurances that government databases will be accurate and updated, no privacy protections for the vast amounts of personal information to be handled by employers and absolutely no recourse for workers who are wrongfully denied employment.

Take Action: Tell your representative to protect Americans' right to work.

http://action.aclu.org


Thank you for defending our right to privacy and protecting everyone's right to work.

3 comments:

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carlos1472 said...

I have actually read the SAVE act and there are provisions to correct issues. If an employer submits your information and there is an inaccuracy you have 10 business to days to resolve with the social security administration. This can be done by providing two forms of identification such as a birth certificate and state issued ID card. It also provides language requiring the SSA to notify anyone that has two or more employers reporting under their social security number to cut down on fraud involving individual SS#.

There are obviously huge holes in these databases but anyone with proper documentation is able to correct them. My concern is for the rare situations where somone may not have the proper documentation but are "legal". No such provision exists in the current bill.

My larger concern is the "big brother" tone of the bills language. It requires another national database to house all birth and death records. This information is already housed in most states and almost all counties. The language of the bill seems to indicate that the states will be responsible for creating this digital database which in turn will pass bills requiring counties to do the same.This will "probably" address the issues above over the long haul but the disaster of record keeping in most counties in this country will need to be worked out before this bill is effective for working out errors.

There are also assurances in the bills language that this information is to continously be updated.

You are correct that there are no privacy provisions however the employers only submit the information to the government agency. They in turn will receive back an approval or denial. We all hand over our details when hired by an employer already but there must be assurances that no other information can be obtained by employers.

Employers are not held accountable for errors in the database but they should not be. They are being forced to use this system as we are but there are however already laws in the books for employment discrimination if they use this for purposes other than verification of citizenship.

The bill has problems (as most bills do) however I see no issue with consolidating these efforts that are now handled by a hodge podge of governemnt agencies.

carlos1472 said...

The bill is located here:

www.numbersusa.com/PDFs/SAVEActSBS.pdf

Is the economy a bigger problem in the US than racism?