A committee in the Rhode Island State Senate heard a bill late last month that would require businesses with at least three employees to use E-Verify, an online database that checks a job applicants' eligibility to work in the United States. The bill is meant to discourage businesses from hiring unauthorized workers — in other words, it is an effort to crack down on the hiring of illegal immigrants. In light of Rhode Island's current economic difficulties, the state should ensure that legal residents and authorized workers receive the jobs that are available, said state Sen. Marc Cote, D-Woonsocket and North Smithfield, the legislator who proposed the bill, in an April 7 Herald article.
But the system's ability to correctly identify unauthorized workers is highly suspect. Overall, the system is about 96 percent accurate, according to a 2010 report by an outside firm contracted by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to study E-Verify's accuracy. But it is only successful half the time at doing what it is supposed to do — identify potential hires who are not allowed to work in the U.S. About 54 percent of the unauthorized workers checked by E-Verify were given the green light to be hired, possibly due to the use of fraudulent documents by unauthorized workers.
In this light, Gov. Lincoln Chafee's '75 P'14 decision to do away with former Gov. Donald Carcieri's '65 policy of using E-Verify for all state job applicants is commendable and highly sensible, and we agree with Chafee's spokesman's characterization in last week's Herald article of E-Verify as a "divisive tool." Why roll out a system that has the potential to alienate Rhode Island's legal immigrant population when it fails to consistently accomplish its ostensible purpose?
The proposed legislation comes at a time when the topic of how the state handles illegal immigration is especially sensitive. The Providence Journal reported last week that Attorney General Peter Kilmartin brought Secure Communities — a controversial program that checks the information of all people who are arrested and booked by law-enforcement agencies against a federal database to see if they should be deported — into effect in Rhode Island at the end of March without any public announcement. Providence asked to opt out of Secure Communities, but according to an assistant director of the program, all local law-enforcement jurisdictions must share their information with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Secure Communities in particular carries with it a high risk of racial profiling and producing fear and distrust of the local police. Along with E-Verify, another attempt to more seriously enforce federal immigration law, this program contributes to a climate of hostility toward people who are not perceived as Rhode Island's own. The reality is that nearly 12 percent of the state's population is Hispanic or Latino, and almost 13 percent was born in another country, according to last year's census. Out of those that are foreign-born, nearly half are now U.S. citizens. As Rhode Island and the rest of the country attempt to find ways to enforce immigration law, let us aim to do so effectively and fairly, without promoting the discrimination or exclusion of people who are, in fact, our own.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
