The Basic Pilot Program, I-9 verification of employee data

First let me inform every one that I have now successfully verified I-9 data with our Department of Homeland Security Data Base and the Social Security Administration 89 times over the last year. The first case was accomplished May 13, 2005 and we are moving to that anniversary date very quickly.

Now this next part of my up-date is a real situation that proves that TNHR's understanding of the ease of a foreign national getting apparently good documents at whatever price in order to get over the verification system. For those that do not remember: 3 years ago we began the validation of Social Security Numbers on-line as a test. We were the only company involved in our entire state. The program was very successful and SSA even brought the staffers to our office to check out our program and to validate their program against exact documents in our files. This went well! Once the word was out the Foreign Nationals stopped coming to our door for employment. Everyone of them that did were false and then after almost a year, Mr. XXX comes to our door with his papers and the system verified this person as real. We completed the enrollment and put the individual to work.

In May of 2005 we jumped from the SSA test program to the Basic Pilot Program, which incorporated the USCIS Work Permit data with the SSA data for private employers. Government agencies had the S.A.V.E. program for several years; I dropped the SSA verification Program from my computer and went 100% to The Basic Pilot Program. Success has been very comforting!

On Monday afternoon, I received a telephone call from Mr. XXX stating that he was Mr. XXX and that our Mr. XXX (employee)had stolen his ID. He new this to be true because he had attempted to apply for his Income Tax refund and the IRS wanted to know why he had not reported the $thousands$ of dollars sent in by our company in his name and SSN. I told him that I would investigate, but that we had checked out our MR XXX with the SSN test program and our MR. XXX was verified as he had submitted apparently good work permit and SSN.

I can just hear Gene from here: "Pork,I told you so". Now, Gene, here is what I did: 1) asked the caller to send me by FAX copies of his documents. 2) I compared the FAX I-9 documents to our record I-9. 3) Compared the blocked lettering signatures, they appeared to be alittle different, but not being a signature expert, I sought more information. Based on the comparision, I had to find out which foreign national was the real MR. XXX. I contacted the staff of the Basic Pilot Program and informed them of my delimia, which is the real MR. XXX?

I FAXed to the staff copies of both "I-9 on file" and of the "caller's documents". After about 3 hours the staffer called me back to let me know that the caller was the real permitted MR. XXX. Our "A" number was the only different item on both set of documents. Our document with the A-number belonged to a totally different name person. The social security number and the A-number on the caller's documents belonged to Mr. XXX.

At this point the staffer provided me with a document which caused me to issue an immediate suspension of our employee and ordered him to be back at the work site with his documents the next morning. The remote location manager called the person into the office and told him that he was being suspended to go home and bring back to the work site his papers, because I would be up there in the morning to recheck his papers. He did not return yesterday afternoon nor did he return this morning.

Well, today we are real sure that this individual will soon not be employed by our company. He will be terminated as a absentee person. The real Mr. XXX is really mad because he is a permitted foreign national, with now a stolen ID situation on his hands. I have promised to help him and have apologized to him, but not quite sure at this point what, if anything, I might do to correct his IRS records. We have been sending tax $ollars to both State and Federal TAX to his name and his account; money that he did not earn as an employee of ours. I will be turning over the facts to our Controller for his guidance.

Bottom line for me is the fact that the Basic Pilot Program gave me the tools necessaary to break this scam. I highly recommend again that all employers should join this program and help our country to begin to make some headway toward cleaning up our immigrant program. Regardless of TN HR's dislikes and words, the program is out here in our HR world and one solution is out here and free for the asking.

Please forgive me for the length of this post, but it is important and you, my peers, are deserving of information and reading about the good and the bad of programs like this!

PORK, May we all have a Blessed day tomorrow!

Comments

  • 3 Comments sorted by Votes Date Added
  • What's your point? This happens every day and SAVE cannot stop it. SAVE will verify each and every one of these turncoats. Don't you get it? Have the golden juices caused permanent damage?

    By the way, the proper procedure would have been to notify the individual who called you to contact their local IRS field office. They in turn would send you the necessary documents to proceed. Your eagerness to investigate the FOREIGN NATIONAL in your employ shows your true motivation. I'm going to laugh hysterically the day Prestage gets the mother of all suits under your watch. It's coming. This time it won't be Sierra Club or some environmental regulatory agency (your usual enemies). It will be DOL or EEOC v. Prestage.

    Gene
  • [font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 02-23-06 AT 08:57AM (CST)[/font][br][br]TN HR: Oh, good morning to you and the rest of our HR peers.

    I knew you would come through with words that would be adverse. You missed the point! The Basic Pilot Program has taken action on 89 new employees: Foreign Nationals and U.S. Citizens and 100% have been reviewed for correct and matching data on our completed I-9s.

    5% of the U.S. Citizens & foreign Nationals have been referred to the appropriate SSA for correction of I-9 mis-matched data. 100% of the U.S. Citizen have returned that day or the next day with records corrected and a document from the SSA that tells me what the error was and how to fix the issues, if they have not already done so. 100% of the Foreign Nationals referred have not returned, they chose not to get the data error corrected.

    100% of the referred Foreign Nationals I-9 forms with "data mis-matched" have never returned to our work sites for continued employment. They, like the U.S. Citizens, were given the opportunity, but chose not to do so and were terminated as a result of "position abandonment".

    The case that is in this post pertains to an employee that I originally employed after checking the SSN on-line with SSA. All was good, as you claim, until the real MR XXX showed up.

    Our Mr. XXX was enrolled based on apparant good documents and an on-line validation of the SSN. Since, by MOU between DHS and my company, I am not allowed to run a report on our current employees, I must assume, like you do that these employees and their documents are all legal. However, with new information and a resonable consideration it is my responsibility to investigate the facts, as reported.

    I have an obligation to protect our employees from false claims, regardless of their National Origin. As apart of my investigation, I was able to contact the staff of the Basic Pilot Program to run a report on one of our current employees (I do not have the authority to run a check on anyone that has been employed for greater than 3 days.)

    Making contact with the IRS will be the next step to determine how to fix some incorrect information that was submitted to them by our corporate accounting division.

    TN HR: It is good to read that you are still adamantly opposed to The Basic Pilot Program, a child of the S.A.V.E., which is the verification system for government agencies (over 12 years in place). The Basic Pilot Program is for private employers, who choose to take advantage of a system of checks to verify the data submitted by any new employee on the I-9 Forum. Even with your bad experiences and words, I know, what we have in place is protecting this company from employing illegal foreign nationals for the long haul.

    I know, what we have in place is verifying U.S. Citizen records, and finding some mis-match data and we are helping our employees to clean-up data stored in the records of our country. Now you must say "yes" to this circumstance. So, why not support me in this circumstance and for this opportunity? An added value is the verification of I-9 data and/or the correction of data for "everone".

    The fact that we catch 100% of the data errors and 5% of our employees are referred to our government for a correction of the data bank errors and 100% of the foreign nationals have been referred, like 100% of U.S. Citizen with data entry errors, is a good thing. The fact that a Foreign National has not taken the opportunity to get his/her data errors corrected is strictly the call of the individual employee!

    Now, surely, you can see the value of The Basic Pilot Program as being for the "verification of our U.S. Citizens data banks". If we catch 100% of the employees with errors that is a good thing, and the fact that 4 out of 89 new employees have been Foreign Nationals with errors is also a good thing. We identified a real issue of incorrect data and now we set out on a structured path to get it fixed for everyone involved without any discrimination based on National Origin. That is a real good thing! It takes 10 seconds to get on-line and 60 seconds to complete the verification and less than 10 seconds to know the correct trails to travel for the protection of my company and our employees to get data corrected.

    May you have a very Blessed day.

    PORK
  • I'm glad you're experiencing this level of success with the program pOrK. I wish that you would simply accept the fact that it is a flawed system. It is not foolproof and you should report it as such. Recent independent studies are reporting, on average, a 15% error rate for SAVE Basic Pilot. This, by the way, is the accepted error rate by the government agency that oversees SAVE, so that should tell you something.
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