The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is strongly opposed to The Secure America through Verification and Enforcement Act ("SAVE Act,"HR 4088).   We are particularly concerned about the cost of the Act to the federal government and the burden that it will place on many American workers and those legally authorized to work in the United States.  Despite this tremendous cost and burden, we believe there is no evidence that the enforcement only approach will have much of an effect on the immigration problem currently facing the country.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released an estimate of the costs of the SAVE Act.  It determined that the "SAVE Act"would decrease federal revenues, increase government spending and create an unfunded mandate for states and private employers.  The Act will most likely cause many employers who rely on low skill workers to go underground because mandatory employment verification will force current taxpayers off legal payrolls.  This concerns us greatly for two reasons.  First, it will cause a decrease in federal revenues because it will make it hard to enforce workplace laws.  The CBO estimates that federal revenues will decrease by $17.3 billion over the period of 2009-2018. This decrease largely reflects the judgment that mandatory verification of employment eligibility through an electronic verification system would result in an increase in the number of undocumented workers being paid outside the tax system.

Loss of tax revenues is not the only adverse effect of forcing employers underground.  When employers operate as part of the underground economy, they make it hard to enforce wage and hour and other workplace laws.  This will drive down the wages and working conditions of American workers as these unscrupulous employers gain a competitive advantage on those employers who are properly treating their workers and trying to comply with the law.

The CBO also determined that the SAVE Act will increase discretionary spending by approximately $10.3 billion over the 2009-2013 period and $23.4 billion over the 2009-2018 period. Those costs reflect the federal government's expanded use of the employment verification system, additional personnel for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), increased detention capacity, grants to certain local governments along the borders and additional costs to the Social Security Administration (SSA) for verifying the proper use of Social Security numbers.   In addition, direct federal spending will be increased by $30 million over the 2009-2018 for salaries of new federal judges authorized by the bill.

Finally, the SAVE Act will violate the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) by imposing unfunded mandates that will require all employers - including public entities - to verify all new hires through the expanded electronic employment verification system, require all states to maintain data regarding birth registries and require all employers to provide information to the SSA.

A tremendous burden will also be placed on over two million American workers.  This E-verify requirement will put all workers including U.S. citizens and other authorized workers at risk by checking immigration status with the deeply flawed Social Security Administration database. The Social Security Administration itself reports that there are more than 17.8 million clerical errors in the system, which could result in 2.5 million people a year being misidentified as unauthorized for employment.  These workers will have to take time away from their jobs to go to the Social Security Administration (SSA) to correct these problems.  This will result in a substantial loss of wages to the workers and a loss in productivity for employers.  Undoubtedly, some American workers will end up being incorrectly terminated by anxious employers.  There is also likely to be racial profiling by employers that want to make sure that they are incompliance with the law.

There is also no evidence that SSA will be able to handle this onslaught of inquiries over mistakes in social security numbers.  If SSA is unable to handle this dramatically increased workload, it will not only affect the 2.5 million workers who have errors in their SSA records but also the elderly and disabled who need to go to SSA to apply for or fix problems with their social security benefits.

The tremendous burden placed on American tax payers, American employers and American workers has to be weighed against the value of following this enforcement only approach to immigration.  This approach has been pursued in the past and the result is an ever increasing number of undocumented workers coming into this country.  The Act does nothing to deal with the problem of employers who rely on low skill workers and cannot find American workers to perform that type of work.  The fact of the matter is that our immigration problems will not go away until we find a fair and practical way to get undocumented workers out of the shadows and into the system: passing criminal background checks, paying taxes, and learning English and replace an illegal flow with a controlled legal flow of immigrant workers, will these enforcement measures be effective.

Therefore, we strongly urge the Committee and the Congress not to pass the SAVE Act and to instead turn its attention to comprehensive immigration reform including increased enforcement measures.  However, we stressed that these enforcement measure will not be effective until we deal with the 11 million undocumented workers and their families already in the country and the growing need of our economy for low skilled workers in a rapidly growing service economy.

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