U.S. companies protest worker screening change

Mark Drajem

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 | 9:26 a.m.

Representatives of technology and manufacturing companies such as Intel Corp. and General Electric Co. asked the U.S. Commerce Department to drop consideration of broadening mandatory background checks of foreign workers.

The program requires companies that research items with both industrial and military uses to license employees who are citizens of nations that the U.S. bars the export of military technology. The proposed changes would expand the screening to include those born in high-threat countries including China or North Korea regardless of their current citizenship or residency.

That change would mean that a system now generating less than 1,000 security reviews each year would expand to "tens of thousands," business lobbyists said in filings to the Commerce Department that were due today. Each application process costs a company $20,000, they say.

The changes would "require an absolutely enormous compliance cost," said Edmund Rice, president of the Coalition for Employment through Exports in Washington, which represents companies such as Oracle Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc.

The Commerce Department's Inspector General last year issued a report warning that the current screening procedure was failing to prevent the transfer of U.S. software, nuclear and related expertise to China and other nations that could be a military threat. The department responded in March by publishing the Inspector General's proposals and soliciting comments.

"It is likely that there would be a very significant impact on the business community," if those plans were adopted, said Peter Lichtenbaum, the department's acting undersecretary for industry and security. Lichtenbaum said his office will review the more than 100 submissions from businesses, research centers and universities and decide whether to issue new rules.

One of those submissions characterized the proposed rules as unfair and capricious.

"This proposed rule is entirely arbitrary, and would extend to many who have fled the conditions of their country of birth," Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, wrote in its submission dated June 24.

"An engineer, for example, who fled Iran in 1979 and found refuge in Canada, with decades of Canadian citizenship or permanent residency, would become an immediate suspect," he said.