E-Verify Threatens American Jobs and Liberties | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary

E-Verify Threatens American Jobs and Liberties | Daniel Griswold | Cato Institute: Commentary: "E-Verify sounds reasonable in principle, but a pilot program has exposed potential problems. A government-commissioned study by Westat found that the system failed to flag more than half of the unauthorized immigrants who applied to work at companies using the system.

The system also exposes too many legal workers to the risk of being falsely denied permission to work. As my Cato Institute colleague Jim Harper concluded in a study of the program, 'It would deny a sizable percentage of law-abiding American citizens the ability to work legally. Deemed ineligible by a database, millions each year would go pleading to the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration for the right to work.'"

"A 2009 study for the Cato Institute found that a 28.6 percent reduction in the number of unauthorized low-skilled immigrants in the United States through increased border and interior enforcement actually would cost U.S. households $80 billion a year. The study found that a resulting decline in immigrant labor would mean less investment, more money diverted to smuggler fees and other unproductive uses, and relatively fewer jobs further up the skills ladder."