by Randel Johnson 

As we've emphasized already, if the Congress is going to be successful at stimulating the economy, it needs to get out of the economy's way. Each new mandate or regulatory hurdle that makes it into the stimulus package will act like a handbrake just as we're trying to accelerate. The Wall Street Journal today highlights a handbrake that so far the Congress has resisted pulling: requiring any company receiving stimulus funds to participate in the Department of Homeland Security's E-Verify program.

E-Verify, if you're not familiar, is an electronic system for verifying that the Social Security number and the name given by an employee match those in the government databases. This is a proper and important role for the government, but the system must work well to be effective. The WSJ editorial highlights some of the problems with E-Verify:

In 2007, DHS commissioned an independent study of E-Verify, which concluded that "the database used for verification is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the requirements for accurate verification." The error rate was almost 10% for foreign-born U.S. citizens. E-Verify's vulnerability to identity fraud is also problematic. A person using a valid Social Security card that doesn't belong to him would go undetected by the system. Mandating use of E-Verify could provide a nice boon to an already thriving document-fraud industry.

On top of that, and perhaps even more troubling for a nation trying to move quickly, there are questions about the progam's scalability.

[T]wo weeks ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the Administration would delay the rule until May 21 "to see what needs to be done to increase the capacity for the E-Verify system." If the Obama Administration is concerned that the program will buckle under the demands of 168,000 or so federal contractors, E-Verify certainly doesn't belong in a stimulus package that would require the system to determine the job eligibility of tens of millions of new hires.

It's crucial that we get employee verification right. Now is not the time to rush into a questionable program, making it harder for companies to hire.

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