E-Verify has been proven to be 99.5 percent accurate -- meaning that out of 1,000 queries, 995 work applicants were instantly authorized to work. So what about the 5 work applicants who were flagged as possibly not authorized to work? In those cases, the applicant is flagged as Tentative Non Confirmed (commonly referred to as a TNC). Note that the key word is Tentative.

It is important to remember that the worker must be hired and on the payroll before an E-Verify query can be made. When an applicant is flagged as a TNC, the employer may NOT fire the worker. Rather the employer must give the TNC applicant the opportunity to fix his/her record.

In running an E-Verify query when I hired my Mexican immigrant wife who is a naturalized U.S. citizen for my own business, she was flagged as Tentatively Non Confirmed because the Department of Homeland Security could not confirm her claim that she was a U.S. citizen. Under the E-Verify rules, I had to give her eight government business days to fix the record -- she fixed it the next day when she presented her U.S. Citizenship Certificate to the Social Security Administration in Douglas, AZ. The problem was traced to her not having notified the Social Security Administration that she had become a U.S. citizen (this type of problem can now be fixed by telephone).

If the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other E-Verify opponents were really concerned about mistakes in legal workers records, they would be pushing E-Verify as a public service because it notifies legitimate workers whose cases were erroneously flagged as unauthorized, to make the correction now, rather than when they reach the age of 65 and find out they haven't been credited for decades of work.

Instead, the E-Verify opponents want you to believe that the workers who quit on their own, were legal workers who were so intimidated by E-Verify, that they were scared off. More likely, they were illegal aliens using fraudulent documents who didn't want to get busted.

For employers that misuse E-Verify, there are stiff penalties. And there are plenty of immigration lawyers chomping at the bit to make legitimate workers who were wrongly fired, rich.