I don't use the word "lie" lightly, but I think it applies here.

First, some background. Ventura County Congressman Elton Gallegly supports E-Verify, which runs social security numbers through a federal database to determine if a worker is authorized to work in this country.

Pro-illegal-immigrant groups are running radios ads on Spanish-language stations criticizing Gallegly and others for advocating this common-sense program. According to the Star:

SEIU and America's Voice Education Fund, which supports comprehensive immigration reform, are the two organizations behind the ad campaign. A similar ad will appear in La Opinion, the nation's largest Spanish-language newspaper.

Immigration supporters and others argue that requiring employers to use E-Verify to check the backgrounds of potential workers would have a huge impact on Latinos in California and across the country.

Before we delve into the lie that America's Voice Education Fund is perpetuating, I can't let this slip by without comment--"immigration supporters" oppose Gallegly? Does that make him anti-immigration? Or is he only anti-illegal-immigration?  Let's not forget there's a difference between those two, people.

I digress. America's Voice Education Fund--what a pleasant name, by the way--"supports comprehensive immigration reform," which is a euphemism for amnesty.  Here's the group's problem with Gallegly:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, has filed legislation mandating the use of E-Verify, even though a government report last year found errors and other problems with the program. Gallegly is a co-sponsor of the bill, which cleared the Judiciary Committee last week and is now headed to the House floor for a vote.

Gallegly is a co-sponsor of an E-Verify bill, and a government report "found errors and other problems with the program."

What kind of errors, you might ask? America's Voice's website blares, "E-Verify has 50% Failure Rate, Throws Hundreds of Thousands of Legal Workers Out of a Job."

A 50% fail rate, huh? According to the government, it has a 96% success rate. Who's right?

This is where the lie comes in, but it's important to see how tricky America's Voice is.

93.1% of E-Verify's results correctly identified authorized workers as "authorized." Only 0.7% were authorized workers that E-Verify said were not authorized. America's Voice wants you to think that 0.7% is 50%. Pretty brazen, right?

Here's how they got to 50%. E-Verify found that 6.2% of the workers it checked came back as unauthorized. Of that 6.2%, half were illegal immigrants that E-Verify failed to identify. In other words, the 50% error rate only includes illegal immigrants who got away with it, not workers that were authorized to work but came back as unauthorized, as America's Voice would have you believe.