William L. Clay: “I rise to support the Chabot-Conyers amendment. While I commend the sponsors of the bill for removing the horrendous…”

“I rise to support the Chabot-Conyers amendment. While I commend the sponsors of the bill for removing the horrendous mandatory employment verification system included in the bill reported by the Judiciary Committee, this voluntary employment verification system has major flaws. The prospect that millions of people would lose or be denied jobs because of unreliable data or employment discrimination is too great a risk to take in a free society. We already know from an INS telephone verification pilot project currently underway in southern California that there are major flaws in a system that tries to merge INS data with Social Security Administration data. And, who suffers most when a verification system makes errors or is too slow? The job seeker is the one most harmed. It is unfortunate that proponents of this voluntary system chose to delete critical civil rights protections that were included in the Judiciary Committee text, particularly provisions that provided for testers to identify discriminatory employer behavior that would likely result from the verification system. This technique has been effective in identifying other types of discrimination, including housing discrimination. Such civil rights protections must be part of any fair employment verification system, voluntary of mandatory.”