Allegheny Council Takes Steps to Verify Legal Workers

Allegheny County Council agreed Tuesday night to participate in a program to verify that workers who are employed by companies contracted for county-subsidized projects are lawfully within the United States. 

The county will require contractors to participate in the E-verify program—federally created and administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration—to certify they do not knowingly employ any illegal laborers when agreeing to accept county work.
 
The program requires companies and employees to submit information from the employment eligibility verification form (I-9) to the free online E-Verify program. 

By electronically comparing information taken from the I-9 Form against 535 million records in the databases of the two departments, the program verifies that citizens are legally in the country and able to work. 

If the program is unable to authorize the employee, it notifies the company and the employee is given time to resolve the discrepancy. 

“The purpose of e-verification is to assure our citizens that their tax dollars are being utilized to secure jobs for legal workers,” county Councilman Edward Kress said in a statement. 

“Undocumented workers in the United States take jobs from legal workers and cost taxpayers. The Federation for American Immigrant Reform estimates that Pennsylvania local and state governments spend about $1.4 billion on illegal aliens. As a county, I hope we will enforce policies that encourage the retention of jobs for our citizens.”