Sponsors (42)
Official title: To amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to make mandatory and permanent requirements relating to use of an electronic employment eligibility verification system, and for other purposes.
Introduced January 9, 2025 by Ken Calvert · Last progress January 9, 2025
The bill strengthens and standardizes a nationwide electronic employment-eligibility verification system—improving speed, enforcement, and worker protections for identity-fraud victims—while imposing substantial compliance costs, expanded enforcement powers, privacy risks, and increased liability that could disrupt employment for immigrants and burden small employers and taxpayers.
Employers, employees, and taxpayers will get a more reliable, faster nationwide verification process (automated confirmation codes, set timelines, guaranteed SSA funding and oversight) that reduces service disruptions and creates auditable records for compliance.
Immigrants, other workers, and families benefit from stronger procedural protections (secondary verification windows, limits on termination while verification is pending, SSN lockout for fraud victims, corrections of SSN misuse) that reduce prolonged job uncertainty and help recover compromised records.
Taxpayers, law enforcement, and regulators gain stronger enforcement tools (audits to flag wage-reporting mismatches, clearer rules for referral entities, debarment authority, and criminal prosecution clarity) to deter illegal hiring and improve payroll compliance.
Small businesses, employers, and contractors will face substantial new compliance, training, recordkeeping, and technology costs across hiring, photo-matching, pilot adoption, and mandatory checks.
Immigrants and other workers face increased risk of wrongful tentative nonconfirmations, delays or loss of employment, and stressful secondary processes if databases or matches are incorrect or procedures are poorly implemented.
The law centralizes DHS discretion and expands data sharing (including with private designees/contractors) and state enforcement pathways, raising privacy risks and creating more government control over identity and employment data.
Based on analysis of 14 sections of legislative text.
Overhauls federal employment‑eligibility verification: rebuilds the electronic system, tightens employer duties, adds identity‑authentication pilots, new SSN‑block/suspend programs, and raises penalties.
Creates a major overhaul of U.S. employment‑authorization verification by rebuilding the federal electronic verification system, tightening employer verification duties, expanding penalties and debarment authorities, and funding SSA costs through a DHS–SSA agreement. It requires new identity‑authentication pilots, programs to block or suspend Social Security numbers suspected of fraud (including for minors and identity‑theft victims), strengthens an employer sworn‑attestation regime, revises the I-9/verification legal defenses, and allows limited state enforcement tied to federal procedures.