Jim Sensenbrenner: “Mr. Speaker, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ…”

“Mr. Speaker, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made it unlawful for employers to knowingly hire or employ aliens not eligible to work and required employers to check the identity and work eligibility documents of all new employees. Under this Act, if the documents provided by an employee reasonably appear on their face to be genuine, the employer has met its document review obligations. The easy availability of counterfeit documents has made a mockery of the Immigration Reform and Control Act. Fake documents are produced by the millions and can be obtained cheaply. Congress responded to this dilemma in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 by instituting employment eligibility confirmation pilot programs for volunteer employers that were to last for 4 years. Under the basic pilot, the Social Security numbers and alien identification numbers of new hires are checked against Social Security Administration and Immigration and Naturalization Service records in order to weed out documents containing counterfeit numbers and real numbers used by multiple individuals.”