It wasn’t the typical rapid reaction that has become a staple of Washington life since Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Usually in political combat, the advocates on opposing sides of an issue attack and counterattack within the same news cycle, sometimes within the same hour.

It took Rep. Ken Calvert, R-California, two days to push back against a coalition of HR groups, led by the Society for Human Resource Management, that wants to replace the government-run electronic employment verification system that he authored, E-Verify.

In a hearing on Tuesday, May 6, the HR Initiative for a Legal Workforce was among critics that called E-Verify inefficient, prone to error and incapable of detecting identity fraud.

In an announcement released late on Thursday, May 8, Calvert’s office called on the organization “to end their campaign of negative advertising and often exaggerated claims against E-Verify.”

On May 6, the coalition led the charge for a bill written by Sen. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, that would replace E-Verify with a new electronic verification mechanism and eliminate the I-9 process.

Companies would be required to submit new-hire information to the Social Security Administration through a child-support enforcement system that about 90 percent of U.S. employers use. But before that happens, the Social Security database would be cleaned up through a congressional appropriation.

The problem with E-Verify, opponents argue, is that it relies on the current database, which has a 4.1 percent error rate and could mistakenly declare millions of people ineligible for employment. They also say that the Johnson bill avoids many other E-Verify deficiencies.

At the hearing, Calvert defended his creation, testifying that 92 percent of employees put into the system are immediately approved and less than 1 percent successfully contest a nonconfirmation.

About 61,000 employers voluntarily use E-Verify. The law that established the system expires in November. Calvert has introduced a bill that would reauthorize it and mandate that all 7.4 million employers sign up over a seven-year period.

Most of the input at the hearing came from people who were concerned that such an expansion of E-Verify would overwhelm the Social Security system.

After mulling it over for a couple days, Calvert issued a pointed statement on Thursday.

“While I appreciated the opportunity to testify, it was clear that the hearing, as evidenced by the second witness panel, was slanted against E-Verify,” he said. “The fact remains that E-Verify is the only tool available for employers, who are required to hire a legal workforce, to check the veracity of identification documents presented by a new employee.”

Then the shot across SHRM’s bow: “There are certain interests that simply do not want employment verification. That is why they will denounce E-Verify and assert that there is a perfect system out there somewhere, when in fact there is no perfect system.”

But SHRM is standing its ground. The world’s largest HR organization has never said it is against verification; but it will continue to oppose the current government system.

“Our opinions are not politically motivated,” says SHRM president and CEO Sue Meisinger. “They are based on what our members say. We think there’s a better way than E-Verify.”

The disagreement between SHRM and Calvert may intensify as November, and E-Verify’s expiration date, approaches.

War and medical metaphors tend to dominate Washington parlance. For instance, partisans are constantly “attacking” someone else’s position or “defending” their own.

Sometimes, one side “inoculates” against an attack by doing something that is meant to neutralize the opposition’s argument.

On the eve of a hearing on employer verification that will kick off a renewed Capitol Hill focus on immigration policy, the Department of Homeland Security announced improvements to its electronic employer verification system on Monday, May 5.

The DHS program, known as E-Verify, has come under withering criticism from employers and HR organizations. The voluntary system, which has been in place since 1997 and now boasts 64,000 participating companies, checks information from I-9 forms against databases at the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

The Society for Human Resource Management and several other HR groups charge that E-Verify is inefficient, prone to error and incapable of being ramped up to handle traffic from all 6 million employers in the country. They cite statistics from a study showing that the Social Security database, upon which E-Verify relies, has a 4.1 percent error rate, which could amount to 6 million people being denied employment by mistake.

So, in typical Washington fashion, the DHS decides to inoculate against such criticism by unveiling two enhancements to the system the day before a Tuesday, May 6, House Ways & Means subcommittee hearing on employer verification.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a division of the DHS, will add naturalization data to E-Verify in order to augment the Social Security databases. It also will allow nonconfirmed workers to resolve mismatches directly with the USCIS rather than going through the Social Security Administration.

“Naturalized citizens who have not yet updated their records with the Social Security Administration are the largest category of work-authorized persons who initially face an SSA mismatch in E-Verify,” the USCIS said in a statement.

The agency also said real-time arrival data from the border inspection system will be added to E-Verify in an effort to reduce mismatches for newly arrived workers.

The improvements are unlikely to assuage SHRM and the other members of the HR Initiative for a Legal Workforce. They are advocating a bill written by Sen. Sam Johnson, R-Texas and ranking member of the House Ways & Means Social Security subcommittee.

Johnson’s measure would mandate that employers submit information electronically only for new hires to the Social Security Administration through a child-support enforcement system already in place in each state.

Advocates for the bill say that about 90 percent of U.S. employers already use the so-called “dead-beat dad” system. The identity of prospective employees would be checked against Social Security and Department of Homeland Security databases. The procedure would eliminate the paper-based I-9 process.

Under the bill, employers would be given the option of signing up for a secure electronic verification system that uses a network of government-approved private contractors to conduct background checks of workers and collect biometric identifiers, such as fingerprints.

At the May 6 hearing, supporters of the Johnson bill will face off against champions of E-Verify. The meeting will launch House consideration of immigration proposals, many of which focus on enforcement.

The hearing series is an attempt by House Democratic leadership to satisfy conservative Democrats—and Republicans—who are pushing for a vote on bills that would crack down on illegal hiring.

Top House Democrats don’t want to allow enforcement measures to move forward without including bills to increase legal immigration and to allow a path toward naturalization for the 12 million illegal workers in the United States.

But the immigration logjam may have to be broken when it comes to E-Verify. The law that established the program expires in November. Congress has to either extend E-Verify or scrap it this year.