U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) implementation of the regulation requiring employers to use a new Employment Eligibility Verification Form (Form I-9) will go into effect on April 3, 2009, after being postponed earlier this year. As of April 3, 2009, employers are required to use a new edition of Form I-9, dated February 2, 2009. The current form should not be used after April 2, 2009. Both the current form and the new form are available at http://www.uscis.gov/i-9. In addition, USCIS has released a new Handbook for Employers that has been modified to reflect changes made to the new Form I-9.
Aside from using the new form itself, the most important changes announced by USCIS are:
• Employers will no longer be able to accept expired documents for I-9 purposes. Only unexpired documents or documents without an expiration date (such as a Social Security card) will be acceptable. If an employee uses a document with an expiration date some time in the future, the employer should docket that date and reverify the document in question before the time the document is set to expire.
• The new edition of Form I-9 also makes some changes to the part of the form in which new hires attest to their status. In Section 1 of the form, an individual must indicate whether he/she is a U.S. citizen, a non-citizen national of the U.S., a U.S. lawful permanent resident or a foreign national authorized to work in the U.S. The new form creates a separate selection for non-citizen nationals of the U.S. Non-citizen nationals of the U.S. are individuals who were born in American Samoa, certain residents of the Northern Mariana Islands who have not become U.S. citizens, and certain individuals who were born abroad to non-citizen U.S. nationals.
• The new form contains a revised “List A” - list of documents that establish both identity and employment authorization. Foreign passports containing the I-551 permanent residence notation printed on a machine-readable immigrant visa have been added to List A. The new U.S. Passport Card was also added to List A. Eliminated from List A are several now-expired employment authorization documents, Forms I-688, I-688A and I-688B. Form I-766, the current version of the employment authorization document, remains on List A.
Employers are required to use the Form I-9 to verify the work eligibility and identity of all new hires. The form is not submitted to the government, but employers must retain the completed forms for three years after the employee’s date of hire or for one year after the date the employee is terminated, whichever is later. Form I-9 may be completed and stored in hard copy or electronically. If you have questions about the Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) process or would like more information about the newly revised I-9 form, please contact Ms. Ruiz-Steele at 610-898-7153; sruizsteele@barley.com.
