Kabuki Theater?

From the Orange County, California Register:

With the clock ticking on the life of a voluntary online system that helps employers make sure they are hiring legal workers, a House panel today heard from lawmakers, business owners and experts on what to do next. ...

Rep. Ken Calvert, who authored the first program to check on the legal status of workers, the Basic Pilot Program, told the House subcommittee on Social Security that the current program should be made mandatory. ...

But after he testified before his colleagues, Calvert said that he doesn't expect any significant immigration bill to pass this year. What is likely, he said, is that Congress will pass a temporary extension of the current system.

Today's hearing before a Ways and Means subcommittee and another session before the Education and Labor Committee are viewed by immigration-watchers as part of an effort by Democratic leaders to show they are taking steps to address immigration. More hearings are expected before the Memorial Day recess on different aspects of the immigration issue.

"Legislating in an election year, especially on immigration-related matters, is more like Kabuki theater than serious policy deliberation,'' said Doug Rivlin, spokesman for the National Immigration Forum, a pro-immigrant group.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Article On E-Verify Hearing

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Forcing companies to use a government system to verify the legal status of workers would cause thousands of citizens and legal residents to be initially rejected for work and cripple the Social Security Administration, critics told Congress on Tuesday.

The system, known as E-Verify, is currently voluntary, but several proposals in Congress — including an immigration enforcement measure known as the SAVE Act — would make it mandatory. ...

he panel's chairman, Rep. Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.), said he was concerned that SSA offices could be overwhelmed with a "massive new workload" as U.S. citizens and other authorized workers try to correct their information. This could hurt efforts by the agency to reduce an unprecedented backlog of disability claims, he said.

Greg Heineman, president of the National Council of Social Security Management Associations Inc., which represents 3,400 SSA managers and supervisors, predicted that making E-Verify mandatory for all U.S. employees would result in an "onslaught" of more than 10 million more visits to SSA field offices.

Competing Proposals Aired At Social Security Subcommittee Hearing

From The Hill:

House lawmakers heard competing proposals designed to ferret out the number of illegal workers in the labor market in a year when even modest attempts at immigration reform appear to be a difficult task. ...

The discrepancy between competing workplace verification proposals was on full display Tuesday, as a House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee heard two ideas for changing the role of the nation’s electronic verification system, also known as E-Verify. ...

A bill by Rep. Health Shuler (D-N.C.) would mandate that the E-Verify pilot program currently in use by some 61,000 employers be uniformly adopted by the estimated 7.4 million employers across the country. ...

But already a competing and wholly different employment verification proposal is emerging from another bipartisan group in the House.

Social Security Subcommittee ranking member Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) have introduced legislation to require only newly hired employees to be subject to verification. They called their bill superior to Shuler’s proposal. Giffords said that Arizona’s experience using E-Verify has been less than stellar.

Many businesses in her state are finding E-Verify “complicated, unreliable and burdensome,” Giffords said. “From our experience in Arizona we know what isn’t working.”

The Johnson-Giffords New Employee Verification, or NEVA, Act, would check only new and non-citizen hires against the “new hire reporting” database put in place by states 12 years ago to track down so-called deadbeat dads, and would not rely on the Social Security Administration (SSA) or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they said.

Johnson and Giffords found a warm reception from Social Security subcommittee Chairman Michael McNulty (D-N.Y.) who homed in on how E-Verify is leaning heavily on what he said was already an overburdened SSA. ...

McNulty questioned Shuler and Calvert on E-Verify’s impact on SSA, and reminded them of the average wait time — well over a year — for a Social Security disability claim to be processed in their districts.

“Imposing a substantial new immigration-related workload on SSA would potentially swamp the agency and threaten its ability to serve our constituents who rely on Social Security and SSI for basic income,” McNulty said. “For this reason, proposals for mandatory verification that do not realistically address the workload placed on SSA’s shoulders should not be enacted.” ...

Despite their differences in approaches — which aides described as deep on Tuesday — lawmakers on both sides followed their testimony with statements indicating that some kind of common ground could be found.

$1 Billion In First Year?

I do not understand the difference between this and the GAO study, but this is from the written statement of Barbara Kennelly, of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare to the House Social Security Subcommittee:

The National Committee was dismayed to learn that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost to SSA of the major immigration proposal would be more than $1 billion – nearly 10 percent of the agency’s administrative budget – in just the first year of implementation. Over 10 years, the plan would cost over $9 billion.

Cost Of Mandatory E-Verify

From a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress:

SSA has estimated that implementation of a mandatory E-Verify program would cost a total of about $281 million and require hiring 700 new employees for a total of 2,325 additional workyears for fiscal years 2009 through 2013.

Roundup Of News Items

There are too many news items on Social Security backlogs and office closures today to give each its own post, which is an interesting milestone in and of itself. Here are today's items:

• The Times Observer of Warren, Pennsylvania is running a story on Kathy Bimber who says she was left legally blind by a tumor, but who was denied Social Security disability benefits. She has contacted many elected officials without success. She is draining her family's savings as she waits for a hearing that may be two years off. Mrs. Bimber cannot understand since she says "I don't want welfare."
• CBS 46 in Atlanta reports on the delays in obtaining a hearing on a Social Security disability claims. I had wondered when a news outlet in Atlanta would finally report this story. Atlanta has the worst backlogs in the country.
• The Galveston News has an editorial on the decision to close the local Social Security field office. I would suggest that the paper start asking their Congressional representatives what they plan to do to prevent this office closure. See below.
  
• The Quad-City Times is running an article on the successful effort to keep the Clinton, Iowa Social Security field office open. The effort was successful due to the efforts of the state's Congressional representatives, particularly Senator Harkin.
  

Growth At Memphis ODAR Office

From the Memphis Business Journal:

The Social Security Administration Office of Disability, Adjudication and Review [ODAR] will move ... by the end of June.

The government agency ... will employ 45 people in the Downtown office building.

The Social Security office ... had outgrown its space.

House Social Security Subcommittee Hearing This Morning

The House Social Security Subcommittee has a hearing this morning (May 6) at 10:00 on "current and proposed employment eligibility verification systems and their impact on the ability of the Social Security Administration (SSA) to fulfill its core mission of administering Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits." No representative of SSA will testify, but there will be many witnesses, mostly speaking about problems with the Bush Administration "no-match" proposal.

The hearing should be available in streaming video.