US Customs and Immigration Services (USCIS) Chief Information Officer Mark Schwartz said that the E-Verify system is in the process of being streamlined by the agency in order to make it capable of scaling prior to adding any more employers into the existing system.
At the present time, being involved with the E-Verify system is voluntary on the part of employers, with the exception of federal employers and contractors within states that require the system to be used to various degrees. However, another bill is likely to be proposed soon by Representative Lamar Smith after a January bill was introduced by Senator Charles Grassley to make E-Verify compulsory for all employers in the United States.
E-Verify is the name of a free online database that allows employers to check that their new hires are eligible to work in the United States and are not undocumented immigrants. The system is currently being used by more than 646,000 employers and boasts an error rate of as little as just 0.16 percent.
E-Verify Employer Agent Alliance President David Fowler noted that mandatory use of the E-Verify system appears to be on its way, with the Trump administration having asked for a further $15 million in funding to pave the way for a national system.
In December 2016, Schwartz began to move the system incrementally to the cloud while still operating within the project’s existing budget, and once it has been fully transitioned, it could be reorganized to become more user-friendly, faster, or have new features added much more easily.