Mark Schwartz, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) Chief Information Office, said the agency is “streamlining the [E-Verify] process and making it capable of scaling if we bring more employers” into the system. E-Verify is currently voluntary, except for federal contractors and employers in states that require its use to varying degrees. But Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) introduced all-employer legislation in January and Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) is expected to offer another bill soon.
E-Verify is a free, online system that enables employers to check for the workplace eligibility of new hires. Over 646,000 employers currently use the system, which has an error rate of 0.16 percent.
“Mandatory E-Verify appears to be something that is coming,” said David Fowler, president of the E-Verify Employer Agent Alliance. The Trump administration requested an additional $15 million in FY17 funding to lay the groundwork for national E-Verify. And Schwartz has already set the stage.
In December 2015, Schwartz started moving E-Verify to the cloud incrementally within its existing budget. Once the system is fully transitioned USCIS can easily add new features or reorganize it to be even faster and more user-friendly, Fed Tech Magazine reports.
“One of the best parts about the cloud is we will be able to right-size it to whatever scale we need,” said Schwartz. “And no matter how many cases we add into the system, there won’t be any degradation of performance.”
