Xavier Becerra: “Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that we must pass, because if we do not, we set in motion some ominous measures that…”

“Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment that we must pass, because if we do not, we set in motion some ominous measures that will not only affect our privacy, but our job security. Let me first say that we have to remember that there are 66 million job transactions that occur in this country every single year. In other words, someone is either hired or somebody changes jobs and gets a new job 66 million times every year in this country. Are there errors that occur in the systems that we have in place with the Social Security Administration and with the INS' own data base? I must answer the chairman's, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Smith], own statement that there are no errors and say, Mr. Chairman, there are. We know it. The Social Security Administration itself has said that they cannot guarantee anything better than probably a 20-percent error rate in the first couple of years. And they are hoping they are lucky enough get it down to a 5-percent error rate in providing information. Why? Because the Social Security number was never meant to be an identifying number, but that is what we are using it for. The INS admits that in its own worker verification pilot programs 9 percent of the time the people that they say were authorized to work were, in fact, not authorized to work.”