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Archive for June, 2011

This week, the House Subcommittee on Immigration and practices within the law to arrange a hearing called “Legal Employment Act” (HR 2164). Bill sponsored by Representative Lamar Smith (R-Texas), would be authorized to use the E-verify system for all employers.

Although hailed as a success by Rep. Smith, E-Check program is actually a deeply flawed. If made mandatory, it would cripple the U.S. economy, destroy its social environment and lead to discriminatory results for workers, especially those in the Asia-American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community.

E-Verify is a federal program on the web program that provides employers a way to check work permits an employee and supplements I-9 form for new employees. In theory, employers can electronically verify the employment eligibility of their employees by the two federal agencies: 1) Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and 2) the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. The drawbacks to the program far exceed its benefit.

Requiring use of E-Verify will prevent millions of American workers from getting jobs and cause many more workers to lose their jobs. Every day, employers already wrongfully receive red flags on workers, known as “tentative non-confirmations” (TNCs), based on errors in the E-Verify databases. These errors arise, for example, if a person’s name is misspelled or if his or her records are outdated.

E-Verify is particularly harmful for foreign-born workers, as green card holders and naturalized citizens are 20 times more likely than native-born citizens to falsely receive TNCs. This is especially troubling for AAPIs because more than 8 million AAPIs are foreign-born.

Furthermore, workers have little or no protection when they are falsely suspended or terminated as a result of E-Verify. Fane, a Tongan woman who was naturalized in 1993, was a victim of an improper E-Verify TNC. Although a U.S. citizen, E-Verify flagged her as unauthorized to work. She was not allowed to return to work until the issue was cleared up, losing out on two weeks’ worth of pay. Only after multiple trips to SSA did she discover that why she received a TNC: when she became a U.S. citizen, her records at SSA were not updated. Under E-Verify, Fane was never able to receive her two weeks’ worth of back pay – a heavy burden for a single mother of four children.

E-Verify promotes discrimination against AAPIs, as under-trained employers may assume a worker is undocumented if they receive a TNC in error and unduly fire the worker or simply not hire them at all. A government-funded study found that employer noncompliance with the E-Verify pilot program’s rules was “substantial,” finding that employers 1) engaged in prohibited practices such as pre-employment screening, 2) took adverse employment actions based on tentative non-confirmation notices, and 3) failed to inform employees of their rights. The proposed law would also allow employers to use E-Verify to prescreen job applicants. AAPI workers and other foreign-born or foreign-looking employees will have a harder time getting a job because employers may want to avoid the risk of E-Verify mismatches or errors. This opens to door to discrimination based on national origin and race.

In an ailing economy, we cannot afford to divert the time and resources of workers like Fane. The American Council on International Personnel reports that corrections at SSA usually take in excess of 90 days, and that employees must wait four or more hours per trip, with repeated trips to SSA frequently required to get their records corrected. E-Verify will jeopardize the productivity of its AAPI workers by creating hardship for employees.

Do not think the fans when they say that E-Verify will help our economy. E-Verify, with their high error rates and potentially discriminatory results will affect all workers, including U.S. citizens and green card holders. As the error rate is reduced and better implementation and accountability procedures are in place, we’ll let you hit the gas in this car broken. E-Verify is not ready for prime time and should not be mandatory.

European share fell for the sixth day Wednesday, with sentiment hit by a bearish assessment of the U.S. economy by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke.

The last strip was defeated by nearly 4.4% dropped out of the pan-European FTSEurofirst 300 index as a string of disappointing data of the largest economy in the world, including the weak labor market and production has raised fears that the pace of recovery may be slowing.

At 04:51, the index fell 1.1% to 1092.25 points, after falling as low as 1,089.78 – its lowest intraday level since March 21.

Investor sentiment was rattled after Bernanke acknowledged a slowdown in the economy but made no suggestion of a further stimulus to boost the economy.

“The question marks regarding the growth dynamics for the global economy are becoming bigger and this is weighing on the markets,” said Tammo Greetfeld, equity strategist at UniCredit.

“If we put this in perspective, the Euro STOXX could move towards the region of 2,650 or 2,700 points, which is the lower end of the valuation that we have seen over the last two years,” he said, adding that whether these levels could attract buyers depended on the extend of economic slowdown and deterioration of the euro zone debt crisis.

The Euro STOXX 50, the euro zone’s blue chip index, was down 1% at 2,746.68 points.

Mining shares, which are the worst performing sectors in Europe so far this year, fell 2.1% as copper prices shed 1.5%, reflecting a rise in the dollar as risk aversion intensified.

LOOKING UNLIKELY

Some investors were likely to have been disappointed by a lack of indications from Bernanke of further quantitative easing measures to support the economy in the wake of the Fed’s current $600 billion government bond buying, known as QE2, which is set to end in June.

“Other Fed members were also speaking yesterday with much the same message coming through: monetary policy is likely to remain accommodative for some time yet, but further QE looking unlikely at this stage,” Evolution Securities analysts wrote in a note.

Among individual fallers, Kabel Deutschland fell 6.2%, as traders pointed to unsurprising earnings and a proposed dividend that was not as high as some had hoped.

The euro, which has been used by a number of investors as a barometer for “risk-on/risk off” trends over the past year, has been sending a contrary signal over the past two weeks, rising about 5% while the Euro STOXX 50 has dropped 5% over the same period.

The 30-day rolling correlation between the euro and the Euro STOXX 50 has fallen to 0.2 from 0.6 back in early May, highlighting the fact that correlation strategies may be becoming less effective in the short-term.

Technical indicators also painted a bearish picture for equities, with the 14-day relative strength index on the FTSEurofirst 300 at 31.9 — inching towards “oversold” territory of 30 and below.

With the addition of a downbeat mood, German exports in April fell more than in January 2009, the Federal Statistical Office reported.