New I-9 Form for Employment Verification Announced by USCIS
On November 7, 2007, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced that a revised Employment Eligibility Verification Form (I-9) is now available for use.
Every employer in the United States is required to complete a Form I-9 for every single employee hired in order to satisfying the employer’s legal obligation to verify the employee's identity and authorization to work. In order to complete the form, the employee must provide the employer with certain documents from a List of Acceptable Documents that establish both identity and work authorization.
Back in 1996, The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) mandated a reduction in the number of documents that employers may accept from newly hired employees during the employment eligibility verification process and in 1997 regulations were issued that eliminated some of the documents that IIRIRA removed as being acceptable . However, Form I-9 was never updated to reflect the revised List of Acceptable Documents.
Now it has been.
The revised form removes five documents for List A—that is, the list of documents that simultaneously prove both identity and employment eligibility. They include: Certificate of U.S. Citizenship (Form N-560 or N-570); Certificate of Naturalization (Form N-550 or N-570); Alien Registration Receipt Card (Form I-151); the unexpired Reentry Permit (Form I-327); and the unexpired Refugee Travel Document (Form I-571). According to the USCIS, there forms lacked features to help deter counterfeiting and fraud.
Also, one document has been added to List A of the List of Acceptable Documents: the most recent version of the Employment Authorization Document (Form I-766).
The new M-274 Handbook for employers, the USCIS instructions for how to complete the new I-9 form, is also now available.
Accordingly, List A now includes: a U.S. passport (unexpired or expired); a Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551); an unexpired foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp; an unexpired Employment Authorization Document that contains a photograph (Form I-766, I-688, I-688A, or I-688B); and an unexpired foreign passport with an unexpired Arrival-Departure Record (Form I-94) for nonimmigrant aliens authorized to work for a specific employer.
Another change is that the instructions to completing Form I-9 now indicate that the employee is not obliged to provide the Social Security Number in Section 1 of Form I-9, unless he or she is employed by an employer who participates in E-Verify. Also, the section on Photocopying and Retaining Form I-9 now includes information about electronically signing and retaining I-9 forms.
The USCIS is encouraging employers to start using the revised Form I-9 immediately but the form will not actually become effective until it is published in the Federal Register. However, in its Fact Sheet announcing these changes, the USCIS also states: “Employers must use the 2007 edition of Form I-9, approved on June 5, 2007. All previous versions of Form I-9, in English or Spanish, are no longer valid. The 1988 version of Form I-9 in Spanish expired in 1991. Employers who continue to use the outdated editions of Form I-9 are subject to fines and penalties.
The bottom line for employers is that they should start using the Form I-9 immediately.
