April 2011

Today we went to the booksale of the Durham Library, always a nice way to spend a Saturday morning.

Last year I bought a beautiful edition of Rip van Winkle; this year I found another gorgeous Dutch-American book: Tales Told in Holland. Of course, with sites like Abebooks.com and Amazon you can order any book you like on-line, but there is something very satisfying about browsing big piles of books and finding a hidden gem like this.

Published in Chicago, this book is a collection of Dutch stories and nursery rhymes. Stories include Hugo de Groot's escape in a chest with books and the Lady of Stavoren, as well as many others that I didn't know. It is really fun to see Dutch children's rhymes translated into English, including Sinterklaas songs.

The introduction starts like this:

"Tales Told in Holland consists chiefly of stories with a few translations from the greatest Dutch poets and a few old Dutch nursery rhymes, naive and nonsensical as our English rhymes, and contrasting interestingly with the far more sophisticated rhymes of the French. "

My copy is a first edition from 1926 and thus over 85 years old. It is in good shape for its age and I'm really happy with it.

Last week the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) introduced a new tool for individuals in the United States to check their own employment eligibility status. This new "Self Check" application is part of the ongoing roll-out of the E-Verify program, which aims to help employers check the employment status of new employees.

This tool will become useful to verify if government records are up-to-date. This is especially important for foreign-born workers, whose employment status may change with transitions between various immigrations statuses.

Employment eligibility verification

E-Verify is an Internet-based program run by the United States government that compares information from an employee's Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 to data from U.S. government records. If the information matches, that employee is eligible to work in the United States.

The program was established in 1997 but a government mandate for all federal government agencies to use it per October 2007 significantly increased usage. E-Verify is not without controversy and concerns about privacy and data accuracy have been raised.

From the press release: "E-Verify Self Check, a partnership between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), is the first online E-Verify program offered directly to workers and job seekers. The gives users the opportunity to submit corrections of any inaccuracies in their DHS and SSA records before applying for jobs."

Initially the E-Verify Self Check service is only available to users who maintain an address and are physically located in Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, Mississippi, Virginia or the District of Columbia. In the coming months USCIS will continue to expand the E-Verify Self Check service.

https://selfcheck.uscis.gov/