Last time I wrote about the SAVE Act, here, I just pointed out the devastation that the legislation would cause to the immigrant community and those citizens who have become inextricably tied into it. There's more to it, though. The SAVE Act is something you should be worried about, even if you don't give a damn about those of us it would primarily affect. See the video for a succinct and tuneful breakdown of that. I'll be a little more detailed.

The video's claim:

The bill would require 6 million employers to verify the work status of over 130 million workers using a database called E-Verify, known to have an unacceptably high error rate (4.1%). It contains roughly 17.8 million errors, according to the Social Security Administration--high enough to put 2.8 million American citizens' jobs at risk.

What I have to say about it: 

The specter of the illegal alien slipping into the jobs which properly belong to American citizens is all well and good for some, but what do you do when your supposed allies are the ones "taking your jobs"? When immigration enforcement turns on you? We live in an imperfect society, where the government is inefficient and most harsh solutions are missing the point. Here is what you have to risk if the SAVE Act passes.

Although the overall rate of error for the database is only 0.7%, the rate of error for naturalized citizens is much, much higher: 10.9%.  Even aside from errors within the system itself, among employers who have used E-Verify, 52% have received answers that an employee or applicant was non authorized, only to later find that they had made an error in data entry.

Now, when I did my own math, with .7% error rate for 123 million workers (I subtracted the estimated 7 million undocumented workers), the number I got was much higher then 2.6 million. Instead, it was 8.6 million.

This is the point where many people might protest that those who can work legally should be able to easily prove it. Well, not so much. The SAVE Act only allows 10 days for you to prove that you are authorized to work in the U.S. That, though, is only if you receive a "tentative nonconfirmation" from the E-Verify system. There is no answer as to what could be done to protest if an American citizen received results from E-Verify claiming that there were work unauthorized.

Ten days. Guess what doesn't take ten days? Receiving a new social security card. Getting a new birth certificate. It takes at least two weeks for the social security card, and generally longer for the birth certificate. How are you going t prove who you are in ten days if you don't have either of those documents? Even worse--how are you to prove who you are if, as many older Americans or Americans born on reservations don't, you have never had either of those documents?

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Call your Representative NOW to OPPOSE HR 4088 (Shuler-Tancredo "SAVE Act")