The Department of Homeland Security will soon issue a rule outlining how businesses must respond when they receive notice that there are discrepancies in a worker?EUR??,,????'?????<

Many businesses simply ignore such notices now. Under the new rules, employees would have a limited time to contact the Social Security Administration to correct the information, or face termination.

The rule would transfer more responsibility for enforcement to companies ?EUR??,,????'?????<

The initiative follows warnings by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that his department would toughen enforcement if efforts to overhaul the flawed immigration system failed. The discrepancies detected in Social Security employment records can sometimes flag illegal workers on the job.

Legal Residents May Suffer

However, the planned crackdown has provoked concern because many of the errors are benign: misspellings or incorrect birthdates in records of citizens or legal immigrants. There are errors in the records of an estimated 12.7 million U.S. citizens alone, and workers rushing to correct these discrepancies could swamp Social Security offices, much as new travel regulations have paralyzed government passport facilities this year.

And businesses are complaining about bearing the burden of enforcing a flawed immigration system.

In the last two years, Homeland Security has focused increasingly on work-site enforcement ?EUR??,,????'?????<

Laura Reiff, a co-chair of the Business Immigration & Compliance Group at Greenberg Traurig, a Washington law firm, predicts it will trigger ?EUR??,,????'?????<

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