The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) agency is enhancing its E-Verify program to boost its effectiveness and improve the rate at which employment eligibility of new employees is verified.

The system now will include naturalization data, which will allow employers to instantly confirm the citizenship of naturalized U.S. citizens. According to Social Security Administration (SSA), naturalized citizens with outdated records make up the largest number of work-authorized people who initially have mismatched data in the system. The change in the program also will allow any naturalized citizen with an SSA mismatch to contact USCIS directly to resolve the issue.

Other changes to the program include:

• Real-time arrival data from the Integrated Border Inspection System. It is expected that the additional information will reduce the number of mismatches related to immigration status for new workers who legally enter the country.
• Information-sharing between USCIS and SSA to help reduce the number of incidents when citizenship cannot be determined. This move is expected to make the E-Verify system more efficient by providing SSA with the most accurate and timely citizenship status information. It also is expected that the E-Verify system will check against Department of State passport information to reduce the number of mismatches.

The E-Verify system allows employers to electronically verify the employment eligibility of new employees. At this time, more than 64,000 employers participate in program, with an estimated 1,000 new enrollments every week.

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Written by Jenny Cromie, certified human resources specialist (CHRS)