Joe's Thought for the Day
Procrastination is nothing more than the art of keeping
up with yesterday.
Joe's Family
Joe has been married 34 years and has 3 boys. His 93-year-old
father-in-law lives with them. "It takes time
raising a 93-year old." His father has Alzheimer's.
It is not a fun thing. It is a tough road and takes time. Joe
is sandwiched in right now. His kids still live at
home and now so do his parents. Needless to say, he
spends a lot of time with family.
Joe's Business
His business takes up the rest of my time. As many
already know, he
works with his nephew at Berghoff Design Group. He's not
the
owner. He punches in and punch out everyday. He
manages the business. They have 150 employees, 50 crews
and have morphed into 3 companies - construction,
maintenance and now a division in California.
Joe's Church
When not bored with the family or busy at work, Joe is
heavily involved with the church diocese working on
various projects including Membership Committee, Chairman of
Strategic Planning and Diocesan Finance Council.
Joe's Body
The question on everyone's mind is "how did Joe loose all
that weight so fast?" He met a
friend at church that had lost 70 pounds in 3 months.
It changed his life. The secret was a diet program
called The Protein
Sparing Modified Fast
(PSMF). Its an Adkins diet on steroids. To start
you have to go through a complete physical. This is
where Joe learned
his cholesterol was insanely high. It turned out that
all the problems he was having, including chest pains, could
be fixed by losing weight. You must be at least 30 pounds over weight
to start and be prepared for several
doctors visits. They teach
you how to keep the weight off too. Joe never felt hungry
but there were times he didn't feel satisfied. This
diet program is not for everybody and its not cheap.
But you learn so much. The portions we eat as
Americans are insane!
Joe's Take on
E-Verify
First a disclaimer. Joe is not a lawyer.
See your
attorney for advice or go to Nick Mawrenko.
On January 1, 2008 Arizona adopted a law that required every
employer in the state to verify the eligibility of any new
employee. If you don't comply you could face fines and
possibly lose your business license.
Joe has hired 29 people since January 1st.
12 were terminated. 13 passed and are still employed.
4 are still in process. Most of the old employees are
sticking with them unless they move out of state.
To get started you can Google E-Verify and
follow the link to the
government website. Registering you company only
takes a few minutes. You then receive an email with a
website link to get enrolled and certified to use the
program. Make sure you have no interruptions!
Turn off the phone. You have to go through a 100-page
tutorial and it will time out on you, which requires you to
start over. You must also take a test at the end.
When you hire a new employee you must have
them complete and I-9 and get documents to prove
eligibility. Note you CANNOT use E-Verify to
prequalify people. The initial verification comes with
3 days of hire. It will tell you if they are a
citizen, lawful permanent resident or alien authorized to
work.
The most difficult part and the part that causes the most
rejection "errors" is entering the name wrong. You are
supposed to use the name on the I-9 form but Joe has found
more success using the name as listed on their social
security card.
If an employee passes OK you resolve and
make copies. If they don't pass, you have 3 days to
print the letters for review with the employee. They
are to contest them or not and sign them. If they
contest, notification is sent to the SSA through E-Verity.
The employee must bring back a letter saying they went to
SSA but YOU need to get the OK online from the government.
They respond to the referral that you generate when the
employee elects to contest. The SSA or DHS then has 10
days to resolve the issue on their end and get back to you
through E-Verify. The government keeps you
appraised of their review through E-Verify and it could take
longer to resolve. If they go more than 10 days, you
are supposed to resubmit.
If the government comes back with an
"employment authorized", you need to resolve the case and
print a copy for your records.
If the government comes back with an
"employment not authorized", you need to terminate the
employee right away and resolve the case in E-Verify showing
that the employee is terminated. Keep a copy of the
final case resolution.
If there is a photo on some of the ID you
may have to verify the photo.
Joe has had several people say their social
security card is good, and they may even have a card whose
name and number match, but they are not authorized to work
here.
He had another guy with a passport that said
he was a citizen but E-Verify denied him.
One more thing to note, when Joe called SS
and DHS, the information he got from the first line of phone
reps was incorrect. After several more calls he got
through to a person that actually knew something. They
told Joe that the front line phone reps are contract
employees, not government employees, and they don't know
what they are saying.
Good luck!
