The Department of Homeland Security wants U.S. employers to be required to verify the immigration status of their employees.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, now a part of the department, currently runs the Basic Pilot program, with which companies can voluntarily check to ensure that their employees are authorized to work in the U.S. The program, which began in 1997 with employers in five states, has since been expanded to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and reportedly has over 5,000 employers participating.

Now the department wants Congress to provide $135 million for the program and make it mandatory.

That’s right, under this program, you wouldn’t be able to work in the U.S. unless the Department of Homeland Security says you can. And considering their dismal track record with computers and information technology in general, I don’t really think that’s a good idea. One digit wrong in the database and you could not only find yourself out of work, you could find yourself accused of immigration violations — even if you were born and raised right here in the U.S.

DHS heavily supports such a program and is working with members of Congress to get one enacted. But Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke would not say the department’s position on making it mandatory for employers to verify the status of their workers.

“I’m not going to address a number of the issues we are discussing with Congress in the press,” Knocke said. “I’ll just tell you that we are committed to strengthening work site enforcement.”

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff also did not directly answer a question from a reporter during a press conference Monday on whether the department wants to make it mandatory for companies to check the legal status of their employees.

Instead, Chertoff said the department plans to give employers the tools to do so. Companies that are found to knowingly hire illegal immigrants will be punished, the secretary promised.

“We’re looking at work site enforcement as a two-part strategy,” Chertoff said. “One part is giving employers increased ability to verify the status of their workers. But the second part is to hold them increasingly accountable, and be tougher about what we expect them to do and be tougher with the sanctions that we apply to them if they don’t do what’s expected.” — Government Executive

But critics claim that the program will move the U.S. closer to a national identification system.

Officials with Liberty Coalition say the bill, called the “Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act,” ominously “creates a dangerous new national identity database system and firmly establishes the predicate for a new national ID card system.”

In particular, said the organization, Title VII of the bill contains a requirement that employers compare current and prospective workers’ Social Security numbers with a Department of Homeland Security database to ensure they are legally able to work in the United States. If the DHS database doesn’t clear the employee, the employer can be fined.

Michael Ostrolenk, national director for the coalition, said he was not only concerned about the ID implications but also that database glitches or errors could inadvertently penalize some employees and their employers.

“Even setting aside concerns of intentional ‘blacklisting’ of innocent Americans, even a small error rate could mean millions of Americans forced out of work by computer mistakes,” he said.

“Homeland Security has a poor record of putting innocent Americans on secretive ‘no-fly’ lists, and should not be entrusted with determining who is allowed is to make a living in this country,” Ostrolenk added. — World Net Daily

The bill, H.R. 4437, passed the House and is currently in committee in the Senate.