N.C. State’s Human Resources Department is recovering from the effects of the shutdown, which made verification of international employees at the University difficult and caused temporary problems in the payment of some international students.
According to Jill Blitstein, manager of International Employment at N.C. State, the University employs about 8000 permanent faculty and staff, which doubles at the beginning of the school year with the addition of student workers.
“[E-Verify] is a system that is a partnership or agreement between department of homeland security, the social security administration and the employer to do an online employment verification check,” Blitstein said.
According to Blitstein, the E-Verify system was down during the government shutdown, which made the employment eligibility verification process incomplete.
“Our foreign nationals, when they come into the United States, are applying for social security, but some were unable to because of the federal shutdown,” said Suzette Walker, a specialist with International Employment.
According to Blitstein, the foreign students that apply and are hired to work for N.C. State need a social security card in order to receive payment through direct deposit, as well as for tax purposes.
“As a part of international employment, we have a taxation unit that specializes in foreign national taxation, and they’re having a harder time releasing checks to foreign nationals who don’t yet have a social security number because we need to report that to the IRS,” Blitstein said.
However, new employees were still hired and paid as usual without going through the E-Verify system.
“Once it goes to E-Verify, E-Verify will typically review that information and assign a case result,” Walker said. “Currently, there are no case results, but we’re still hiring people as usual.”
With the system up and running again, International Employment said they will be making sure that everyone who was hired during the shutdown gets put into the E-verify system, as it’s required by state law.
“Even once it comes back up, there’s such a pent up demand that the system will probably be slower or it might crash a little more. It’s going to take a long time to get everyone back in,” Blitstein said.
Now that government departments are open again, those that were hired without a social security card are being encouraged to apply for social security as soon as possible so everything is in order by the end of the tax year.