This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, July 9th, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown.

More than one out of 20 employees who are put through the eVerify system are in some sense rejected.

The Department of Homeland Security says those people are illegal immigrants and

the e-Verify system is working to root them out.

Jim Harper, Director of Information policy studies at the Cato Institute, says not so fast.

Well, the use of the eVerify system is beginning to give DHS some returns and they've been reporting them and

maybe spinning them the way they want us to think about them.

And in the mostly voluntary use of eVerify we've seen 5.8% of all submissions that's new

employees whose data is entered into this system 5.8% of them get what's called

a tentative non-confirmation. That's because the information in the DHS database

doesn't match up with what employers are putting in.

5% then are able to contest those TNCs,

tentative non-confirmations, they're resolved and they go to work with their employees.

The conclusion promoted by DHS is that the remaining 5.3% are illegal aliens. The system is working, they're going away.

But I think that's a little bit too simple a conclusion, and I've been looking for better information.

And in fact at a recent meeting of the Department of Homeland Security, Data Privacy, and

Integrity Advisory Committee, staff at DHS said that they would go back and try to figure

out what's actually happening with that

information, or with those tentative non-confirmations.

So we'll learn more information soon.

But some information has come available and bit by bit, we're starting to learn more. There are a number

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