Yesterday, the General Accountability Office — the investigative arm of Congress — released a report assessing the nation’s currently voluntary electronic employment verification program, E-Verify. The report, entitled “Federal Agencies Have Taken Steps to Improve E-Verify, but Significant Challenges Remain” found that though the program has significantly improved, it still contains some troubling problems:

Data Inaccuracies
A “tentative nonconfirmation” (TNC) means that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) cannot immediately confirm the work authorization of a worker. When this happens, it’s up to the worker to clear up the error with SSA or DHS and they can’t work until they do. The GAO describes that process as “difficult” and rife with “formidable challenges.” There are a lot of reasons someone might receive a TNC, including SSA database errors or a failure to report a name change to the SSA. The GAO notes that USCIS has “reduced TNCs from 8 percent during the time period June 2004 through March 2007 to almost 2.6 percent in fiscal year 2009.” It sounds like a relatively small number, however, when spread over a large population, the error-rate is significant. According to GAO, if the program were made mandatory for new hires nationwide, about 164,000 citizens and noncitizens would receive a name-related TNC each year. That number would balloon if E-Verify were made mandatory for all employees nationwide and not just new hires.

Fraud
The GAO also affirmed that, ” Despite USCIS and SSA’s efforts to reduce erroneous TNCs, identity fraud remains a challenge in part because employers may not be able to determine if employees are presenting genuine identity and employment eligibility documents that are borrowed or stolen.” The report cites a separate study conducted in 2008 which estimated that of the 6.2 percent of employees who were not authorized to work in the United States, slightly over half of them were incorrectly confirmed by E-Verify as eligible to work.

Employer Misuse
The report also found that USCIS is “limited in its ability to ensure compliance with E-Verify policies and procedures.” Some of the noncompliance is unintentional and simply a result of employers not understanding the E-Verify program. However, other employers are abusing it. The GAO notes, “workers who are wrongly terminated or suffer other adverse employment consequences because employers fail to follow the MOU receive no protection or remedies under federal law.” Abuses can include “limiting the pay of or terminating employees who receive TNCs, using E-Verify to prescreen job applicants, or screening employees who are not new hires.” The program leaves employees vulnerable to civil rights abuses and discrimination.

Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), has already stated that he plans to focus on expanding E-Verify and potentially making it mandatory in some areas. After the GAO released its report, his office issued a press release calling E-Verify a “remarkably effective tool” and stating, “Expanding E-Verify and encouraging more businesses to use the program is an important step toward protecting jobs for American workers and eliminating the jobs magnet that draws millions of illegal workers to the U.S.”

Certainly, the nation’s current compulsory employment verification system needs to be improved. It’s hard to imagine that any solution will be perfect. Nonetheless, it’s worrisome that rather than focusing on how to improve E-Verify, Smith is already talking about expanding a program which seems like it has a way to go before it’s acceptable. In fact, the GAO went as far to conclude that if E-Verify became mandatory in its current form, “more unscrupulous employers could have the opportunity to hire unauthorized workers without much risk of detection.”

Days after the Tucson shootings, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) spoke out against calls for increased gun control, arguing that there should have been more guns at the site of the massacre. “I wish there had been one more gun there that day in the hands of a responsible person, that’s all I have to say,” Franks said.

Last night on MSNBC during an interview with Franks, host Lawrence O’Donnell noted that the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, was subdued only after he stopped to reload his 31-bullet clip and argued that perhaps other innocents would have been spared if Republicans had extended a law banning larger magazine clips in 2004. But Franks refused to entertain that scenario, and just simply said that he wished Loughner never purchased a gun:

O’DONNELL: I’ll ask you again — do you wish Jared Loughner’s magazine only held 10 bullets instead of the 31 that he fired?

FRANKS: And I will tell you again, sir, that I wish he had not had a gun at all.

O’DONNELL: So, you’re not going to answer that question about the magazine? Will you answer the question about the magazine? […] Your constituents in Arizona would have been better off if Jared Loughner, by law, could only fire 10 bullets?

FRANKS: See, I think that that presupposes he couldn’t have changed clips or all kinds of things.

O’DONNELL: He couldn’t change clips because the colonel was there to stop him, because those heroes in that parking lot were there to stop him. We saw him try to change clips, and he couldn’t do it. That’s what stopped him.

FRANKS: Well, I give every credit to those who stopped him. But I will say to you again to blame the gun rather than the individual is why we continue to have these problems.

O’DONNELL: I blame the individual for the first 10 bullets. I blame the law for the next 21 bullets that he fired.

Watch the segment:

Franks “wishes” Loughner didn’t have the capacity to harm as many people as he did. But instead of advocating for tighter gun laws that would prevent the Jared Loughners of the world from having access to unnecessarily deadly arms, Franks wants to absolve himself of any power he has to do something about it. And at the same time, he wants more people to carry more guns, particularly in situations such as the shooting in Tucson.

As Slate’s William Saletan noted, having armed citizens in a similar situation could likely create more chaos:

In the chaos and pressure of the moment, you can shoot the wrong person. Or, by drawing your weapon, you can become the wrong person–a hero mistaken for a second gunman by another would-be hero with a gun. Bang, you’re dead. Or worse, bang bang bang bang bang: a firefight among several armed, confused, and innocent people in a crowd. It happens even among trained soldiers. Among civilians, the risk is that much greater.

However, the facts remain that the carnage in Tucson earlier this month could have been mitigated to a degree if Laughner had fewer bullets to work with.

Politico offers some new insights into Rep. Peter King’s Homeland Security Committee hearings next month on radical Islam in America:

In a move that will come as a relief to Muslim leaders, King told POLITICO that he’s not planning to call as witnesses such Muslim community critics as the Investigative Project on Terrorism’s Steve Emerson and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer, who have large followings among conservatives but are viewed as antagonists by many Muslims.

Typically, Politico doesn’t bother to explain why many Muslims — and many non-Muslims — might view Emerson and Spencer as problematic figures: because they’re not so much “experts” as they are entrepreneurs whose product is fear of Muslims and Islam.

It will still be important to watch for whether the more presentable affiliates of the “Creeping Sharia” crowd are called to testify — people like Claire Lopez or Andrew McCarthy. This, however, is troubling:

Possible witnesses, according to King, include Dutch critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali and M. Zuhdi Jasser, president and founder of Arizona-based American Islamic Forum for Democracy. Jasser is a sharp critic of leading American Muslim groups, whose agenda he calls “Islamist.”

Hirsi Ali — a Somali Dutch immigrant and activist — believes, among other things, that “Islam is a cult,” that “There is no moderate Islam,” and that “we are at war with Islam.” What will Ali add to the hearings, other than general hostility toward Muslims and their faith?