Blog Post: ALERT: NEW EMPLOYEE VERIFICATION FORMS

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) recently announced that employers must transition to a revised version of the Employment Eligibility Verification Form (I-9 form) for new hires no later than December 26, 2007 or risk facing penalties. USCIS has made this form available on its Web site and can be accessed by  accessing www.uscis.gov.

The amended I-9 form removed five documents from the list of documents employees may use to verify both identity and employment eligibility (referred to as “List A” on the I-9 form).

Effective December 26, employees may no longer submit the following documents to evidence BOTH identity and employment eligibility:

• Certificate of the United States Citizenship (Form N-560 or N-561)
• Certificate of Naturalization (Form N-550 or N-570)
• Form I-151, a long out-of-date version of the Alien Registration Receipt Card (“green card”)
• Unexpired Reentry Permit (Form I-327)
• Unexpired Refugee Travel Document (Form I-571)

Acceptable List A documents include:

• U.S. Passport (expired or unexpired)
• Permanent Resident Card or Alien Registration Receipt Card (Form I-551)
• Unexpired foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp
• Unexpired Employment Authorization Document that contains a photograph (Form I-766, I-688, I-688A, or I-688B)
• Unexpired foreign passport with an unexpired Arrival-Departure Record, Form I-94, bearing the same name as the passport and containing an endorsement of the alien's nonimmigrant status, if that status authorizes the alien to work for the employer

Note that employers do NOT need to complete the revised I-9 form for current employees with a completed form already on file. Any re-verification of employment authorization, however, must be done using the amended form. Re-verification is required when the I-9 form indicates that the employee’s work authorization will expire.

Submitting a document from List A is only one way employees can verify both identity and work authorization. Rather than submit a single document from List A, employees are still able to submit two separate documents (one from List B and one from List C on the I-9 form) as verification. No changes were made to List B or List C documents. List B and List C documents can be found on the revised I-9 form.

Employers have been required to use the I-9 form to verify the identity and employment authorization of newly hired employees since 1986. While employers are not required to file the form with the government, they must keep the form for three years after the date they hire someone or for one year after the date of an employee’s termination, whichever is later.

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