Employee Verifications, Illinois-Style
Illinois employers could soon be the federal government’s E-Verify and other online employee verification systems to check into the legal status of those they are considering hiring.
Recently a unanimous state senate vote passed Senate Bill 1878, which stands to lift the prior year’s ban on using these programs. The repeal bill states directly that businesses are no longer “prohibited” from using these employee verification systems. Now they are only “discouraged” from doing so until the kinks in the E-Verify are worked out and the program is functioning at a 99 percent accuracy rate. Some believe this to be a response to a federal lawsuit filed last summer by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
At this time, state agencies are still forbidden to use the employee verification systems unless federal law requires it. Municipal governments are also not allowed to force companies trying to get city contracts to use the verification systems, according to the bill.
Democratic Senator Michael Noland of Elgin believes that this is the most logical thing to do. He says that “basically, all we’re doing is further enabling employers. There’s nothing wrong with that. Use should increase, and certainly the comfort level of employers should increase.”
Noland went on say that although most of the employee verification systems have improved their level of accuracy to 90 percent or better, it took a better understanding of the way that the programs work to conjure such wide support. Before recently these systems were only functioning at a threshold of 80 percent. According to him, what has improved more impressively is the information that has been provided to the legislature.
At this time all that stands between the bill becoming a law is the vote of the House of Representatives. Within the next few months the legislators should have the first reading of the measure.
Despite the fact that the bill passed in the Senate with a 57-0 vote, with two senators abstaining from voting, House members have said that they are approaching it with caution. Republican Tim Schmitz from Batavia says that he is concerned that glitches in the employee verification programs might lead to unfair sanctions against the employers that utilize them.
Republican Fred Crespo from Hoffman Estates thinks that the bill might not go far enough by federal standards. He thinks that it should perhaps mandate the use of the verification programs instead of giving the option to use them.