E-Verify illegal-worker screening system has holes, report says

Within an hour of becoming Florida's 45th governor, Rick Scott signed an order meant to ensure that anyone working for the state was in the country legally.

But the screening system that Scott is relying on lets unauthorized workers slip through its filter more than half the time because it cannot spot identity theft, according to a federal report.

The E-Verify system, a federal database available to employers, failed to identify those workers as unauthorized 54 percent of the time, according to an audit released last year. Investigators discovered that was the percentage of illegal workers incorrectly deemed eligible for work.

The study done for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services found that overall, the system correctly determined a worker's immigration status 96 percent of the time.