In June 2008, President Bush issued an executive order requiring all federal contractors to verify new hires and existing employees assigned to government contracts through E-Verify. The rule was scheduled to take effect in January — until a coalition led by the Chamber of Commerce sued.

The feds pushed the effective date back to Feb. 20.  Then the Obama administration extended the delay to May 21 — and has just pushed the date back yet again to give the new administration time to review the rule. It’s now set to take effect June 30.

In the meantime, the Chamber of Commerce’s suit is still pending. We’ll keep you posted on how that turns out.

If it’s ever enacted, the rule will apply to companies with contracts lasting more than 120 days, valued at more than $120,000 and involving work done in the United States.

Those companies not already using E-Verify will have to:

• enroll in the program within 30 days of being awarded the contract
• start verifying all new hires within 90 days of enrollment
• verify existing employees who are assigned to work on the contract, and
• continue using E-Verify for the duration of the contract.

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a 26-page report in response to an executive order requiring all federal contractors to use E-Verify. The Chamber’s opinion: The rule is “misguided, premature and unwarranted.”

The main beef is that Congress expressly approved E-Verify as a voluntary program to be used on new hires only — but the president’s order requires companies to also verify current employees assigned to federal contracts.

Also, the Chamber says, the program is “rife with errors and inaccuracies.” An estimated 0.1% of native-born citizens and 10% of naturalized citizens have incorrect data stored in the Department of Homeland Security or Social Security Administration’s databases — those citizens would likely not be named eligible to work by E-Verify.

You can read the Chamber’s comments here.