Mike Turner wants to make sure his company doesn't hire people who can't legally work in the United States.

The human resources manager for Terminix in the Southeast joined a group of about 20 employers and lawyers Tuesday at the downtown Westin Peachtree Plaza for a free seminar on the government's E-Verify system.

The system gives employers instant online verification that a worker's name, Social Security number and green card number match government's records. If there's a mismatch, the employee has the chance to fix the paperwork. If the employee can't fix it, the employer is supposed to fire him or her.

Georgia ranks fourth in the nation in employers who have signed up to use E-Verify. That's behind Arizona, California and Colorado.

A Georgia law cracking down on illegal immigration went into effect last summer and requires all public employers to use E-Verify. It also requires private employers who work on public contracts to run their new hires through the system.

Nearly 3,000 Georgia employers — public and private — have signed up for the program and have run 120,287 inquiries since October, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which administers the program.

"We want to stay ahead of the game," said Turner, whose company voluntarily signed up for E-Verify in November.

The government has included 15 million photographs from its database of immigration documents to help employers review the documents workers present to them.

If an employee produces a green card, the employer can match the photo on the document to the photo on file with the government for that particular green card.

Some have criticized E-Verify, saying it's not accurate and that people allowed to work in the United States sometimes get nixed unfairly.

Officials acknowledged that naturalized U.S. citizens have a higher rate of triggering a negative response that's actually wrong.

About 5 percent of workers are found to be not eligible to work, according to a review of the program. But among foreign-born U.S. citizens, about 10 percent are at first given the red light erroneously when it turns out they were actually OK to work.