Can online database help to curb illegal immigration?

Illegal immigrants steal across the border, get into the United States with hopes of a great future and high-paying jobs, but end up being hired by unprincipled employers waiting for them for their cheap labor.

In its bid to put an end to the hiring of illegal immigrants, the Obama led government has reportedly asked for a 12 percent increase in its new budget, taking the count to $112 million, for E-verify. It should be noted that E-verify is a massive computer database which will help employers to determine whether people they are hiring have the legal right to acquire the job or not.

Tamara Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, a group that stands for employers on issues related to immigration, said that companies want a path to be legal but they aren’t provided proper tools to make sure that it happens.

Currently being run by the Department of Homeland Security, E-Verify is used by some one-lakh-twenty-thousand employers throughout the United States. In addition to its usefulness, there is also no cost for logging on and checking out job applicants by the companies.

If an employer wants to hire a worker, he or she can simply go online, enter the name of the applicant, Social Security Number and other required data, and find out whether the applicant is legal or not.

But this is just the idea behind it and its effectiveness is far from being satisfactory. Tyler Moran, Employment Policy Director for the National Immigration Law Center, said that this is not a proper immigration enforcement tool, as no more than one percent of the total employers in the country are using it. Moran said that the system is also often misused by employers, either to avoid government regulations or because they are unaware of the crime they are committing.