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Department of Homeland Security officials are saying that Illinois is complicating their efforts to pass the buck to local governments in a national effort to reduce illegal immigration. As a result, DHS has sued the state to overturn an Illinois law that virtually blocks employers from taking part in a program designed to verify whether new employees are legally entitled to work in the U.S. The beef is essentially about the quality of the database known as the “Basic Pilot Program.”
The program has since been re-named “E-Verify.” DHS head Michael Chertoff says that Illinois better learn to play nice or else. “The state of Illinois has now made it illegal to comply with federal law,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in an interview. “That’s not acceptable as a matter of the Constitution, and it’s not acceptable as a matter of our discharging our federal obligation to enforce the immigration laws.” Using unusually strong language, Chertoff said the Illinois law, the “Right to Privacy at Work Act,” illustrates the hypocrisy of politicians who criticize the federal government for not enforcing immigration laws.
“We’re beginning to see the schizophrenic nature of the way some politicians are looking at it,” Chertoff said. “They’re now coming back and saying, ‘We want you to enforce the law, but we don’t want you to do anything that would actually lead to enforcement.’” Others contend that states aren’t necessarily too eager to pick up the cost of immigration enforcement and that’s essentially what the federal government is asking them to do – on multiple fronts.
Chertoff’s high profile slam on Illinois, recorded widely in the media, suggests the agency is sending a warning to other states and municipalities that may be considering a law like the one in Illinois. The E-Verify program requires employers to provide identity information permitting immigration officials to confirm whether “would-be” workers can be legally employed. Homeland Security officials say that at the end of last August, 22,205 employers were taking part in its Basic Pilot Program, sending in 2.9 million queries. Critics say that’s such a large series of queries from such a small percentage of the tens of millions American businesses that if DHS was able to get total compliance and enroll all the employers there would be no way to handle the volume of information. According to the DHS lawsuit against Illinois, about 93 percent of such queries are answered either immediately or the next day. The rest are categorized as “tentative non-confirmations.”
An employee can decide not to contest the non-confirmation, but if he does choose to contest the response, Homeland Security will further investigate the matter, a process that can take weeks. That’s where the Illinois law comes in. It says that until Homeland Security can conduct 99 percent of such investigations and return the final results within three days, it’s illegal for businesses operating in Illinois to participate in the E-Verify program.
Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said two laws were passed “to protect employees from unfair treatment under the federal government’s flawed Basic Pilot Program.” “The Internet-based program has a less than 50 percent accuracy rate and takes ten days to get results,” she said.
“Lawmakers in Illinois feel that’s too long and leaves too much room for error.” But whatever the “glitches” with the sputtering immigration enforcement effort, Chertoff says that once DHS decides to do something, it’s “play ball” or else. “What we can’t do when we pass a federal law is have the states decide they want to modify that law,” said Chertoff, a former federal judge. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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