NEW YORK, NY April 24, 2008 —Immigrant advocates are protesting the use and misuse of a federal pilot program designed to help employers check the immigration status of new employees. WNYC's Marianne McCune reports.

REPORTER: Dunkin Donuts has been using the so-called E-Verify program since 2006. It's run by the Department of Homeland Security and allows employers to send in names and social security numbers of new employees to make sure they match.

When a discrepancy is found, the company is supposed to alert the worker and give him a chance to clear it up. But Zahida Pirani of the New York Civic Participation Project says some workers are fired without a chance to defend themselves because employers don't understand or follow the rules.

PIRANI: They freak out and they get scared and they don't know what to do, so they automatically fire those that don't match.

REPORTER: The social security administration's database is deeply flawed. The agency's own inspector general found that 70% of discrepancies apply to native born citizens - not to illegal immigrants. For WNYC, I'm Marianne McCune