The e-verify system has been in place since 1996, and does exactly that: verify legal status of workers. It's required for federal contractors, but only about half of states require its use (it used to be more but some states like CA have actually passed laws banning its use).
I worked for a company that verified I9’s and provided an eVerify integration for employers. I can’t explain what problem it solved.
It was a multi-million dollar if-statement that copied the expertise of the relevant law into a permanently legacy expert system.
Doing anything besides that would be illegal. But that also means there is no cross-referencing or vendor enforcement of fraud.
It did things like check if some tax-related status code was valid for the indicated home country of emigration. It didn’t do things like check against a national database for an SSN.
It basically punished people for filling out forms incorrectly or not being able to scan a document.
We didn’t get new regulations every quarter or ever. I dunno what the point was.
Edit: the everify step technically used personally identifiable information to contact a national database.
I guess my gripe is that I didn’t see how it could prevent fraud in any way a normal HR person wouldn’t have caught if it were to be caught. It’s a duplication of a process everyone was already doing.
as a non-American reading this, only reaction can be... "WTF?!"
can you elaborate on that?
centralized systems for identity are used all over the f world, and de-facto you have them in the US too (hello credit cards, hello driver licenses, hello... SIM card?)... they can be used as _tools_ by regimes with fascist tendencies, but their existence alone is quite neutral
ALL countries with functional governments NEED centralized identity systems to function (hello... IRS?), and they all get them even if you like to pretend they don't exist.
...why not just accept they are there, and focus on properly securing them from attacks, making them unalterable by corrupt officials (from simple checksumming and write-only permanent archives to full-on blockchain solutions), and preventing unrestricted access to them, all technically doable.
If you PRETEND you don't have a centralized identity system, don't you just leave all these problems unfixed and just go on with a broken system forever?
a centralized system is by definition not present locally, so it cannot verify the person itself, hence it cannot be used for identity verification.
You need a local actor for all the things you mention.
Credit card? there's a bit that designate that the card was physically present on the transaction place. And nothing that identify the person (even the signature on the back is joke)
Drivers license? you pay the salary of hundreds of thousands of cops.
IRS? you actually proved my point even further: remember california urging everyone to claim they account/password asap because criminals were rushing and filling fake returns to collect checks instead? clear sign of a system that have no clue how to verify identity.
So, Who is pretending? Stop daydreaming that the technofascist lie of everyone being a verifiable number is real.
It verifies the legal status of the documents submitted. Does little beyond encouraging identity theft of USCs that end up with unexpected tax liabilities.
But the estimated number of "illegal" workers is so much larger than the number of people whose identity is stolen on tax returns each year I'd suggest that the issue isn't so much with the tools already available, so much at people aren't using those tools.
Even if we had a perfect e-verify system that magically guaranteed the result was accurate, it probably wouldn't make a difference. Not while it's use is "optional" in states like Texas.
The fact Republicans in Texas harp on about illegal migration but don't do the most basic thing to reduce illegal labor supporting illegal migration really shows its more about having someone to hate than actually working to solve the problem.
