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Section 2 of the form collects, within 3 days of the employee’s hire, identifying information about the employer and information regarding the employee’s identity and employment authorization. The employee must present original documentation evidencing his or her identity and employment authorization, which the employer must review. The form, used by employers to verify employment eligibility, should be completed for all active employees hired after November 6, 1986, and retained for former employees for the longer of one year from termination or three years from hire. Are you using the correct version of the I-9 Form to verify that your new employees are eligible for employment? Employers must now use only the revised July 17, 2017 version of Form I-9 for employment eligibility verification for new hires.
Form I-9 is designed by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service. Employers must update or reverify certain ID documents at or prior to their expiration date. This does not apply to already presented and accepted non-expired U.S. Passports or Permanent Resident Cards when they reach their expiration date, nor to https://www.bookstime.com/ any List B documents (e.g., state driver’s licenses and state IDs). The USCIS website, in the Employer section, Employer Bulletins, lists the limited requirements and allowed instances for reverification. Kelly assists employers with administrative law matters, focusing her practice primarily on employment-based immigration.
Q: Do I need to have all my existing employees complete the new version of the I-9?
The document must be completed by the employees to verify the identification of the hired employees. Also, the form is completed to document the employment authorization of the individuals in a certain state organization. Federal law requires that every employer who recruits, refers for a fee, or hires an individual for employment in the U.S. must complete Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. Citizenship and Immigration Services, will help you verify your employee’s identity and employment authorization.
- The new I-9 has made very small changes to the form’s instructions and the list of acceptable documents.
- If you require legal or professional advice, kindly contact an attorney or other suitable professional advisor.
- Victims may obtain various types of relief including job relief and back pay.
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is announcing a new version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.
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With the arrival of spring, many agricultural businesses may be looking to hire additional employees. Before putting those new employees to work, employers should take time to ensure a “legal” workforce. One important step is following the Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification process. And with the recent release of a new Form I-9, close attention to Form I-9 compliance is extremely important. For U.S. citizens, I-9s are valid continuously unless a break of more than a year of employment occurs.
III. Use of the Updated Form I-9
Federal law requires employers to follow Form I-9 and E-Verify rules consistently, regardless of an employee’s citizenship, immigration status, or national origin. As a reminder, employers should only complete new Forms I-9 for employees who require reverification. Unnecessary verification of employment eligibility may violate anti-discrimination laws.
To this end, she handles an array of nonimmigrant petitions, applications for labor certification, adjustment of status and naturalization filings, consular processing matters, motions to reopen, and motions… Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship. For a quick refresher on an employer’s responsibilities, sanctions for noncompliance and discrimination pitfalls, please click here for my January 2017 post.
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Further, new drop-down menus for the List A, List B, and List C document fields in Section 2 are specifically tailored so that a user may select only the documents that correspond to the employee’s citizenship or immigration status. If an employee presents a document that does https://www.bookstime.com/blog/a-rundown-of-the-new-i-9-form-for-2017 not match the citizenship/immigration status selected in Section 1, the smart form will alert the employer with a notification message and provide instructions on how to proceed. Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP offers this blog for general informational purposes only.
However, permanent residents who do not apply for naturalization within six months of eligibility are not protected from citizenship status discrimination. Citizenship status discrimination which is otherwise required to comply with law, regulation, executive order or government contract is permissible by law. Employers verify each worker’s identity and employment eligibility by completing the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification at the time of hire.
New Version of Form I-9
Annual internal Form I-9 audits and periodic 3rd party Form I-9 audits by qualified professionals are recommended. Many mistakes discovered during an audit can and should be corrected. No changes to storage – which means that employers may still keep Form I-9s in a single format or a combination of formats, such as paper, microfilm or microfiche, or electronic. For paper I-9s, we continue to recommend a three “binder system” consisting of Active, Reverifications and Terminated I-9s. Employer should keep all of the forms separate from personnel folders and safeguarded due to privacy concerns. In the newly updated Form I-9, USCIS added Eswatini and North Macedonia to the Country of Issuance field in Section 1 and the foreign passport issuing authority field in Section 2 per those countries’ recent name changes.
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Documentation for proof of identity or employment authorization
The Form I-9 instructions explain that employees can present any documentation from the Lists of Acceptable Documents. At the time of hire, all employees can choose to present either an unexpired List A document, or an unexpired List B document together with an unexpired List C document. The Form I-9 instructions tell employers to accept all documents that are sufficient to complete Form I-9 as long as they reasonably appear to be genuine and to relate to the employee. For example, under the Lists of Acceptable Documents, attached to the Form I-9, individuals may present a valid U.S. driver’s license and unrestricted Social Security card to satisfy Form I-9 requirements.
You can learn more by contacting IER and at 8 U.S.C. § 1324b(a)(6). For example, under this part of the law employers must not require lawful permanent residents to produce a Permanent Resident, also known as a “green card,” and must not require U.S. citizens who appear “foreign” to produce a birth certificate. If the Form I-9 instructions require an employer to reverify an employee the instructions allow the employee to present any valid List A document or List C document for reverification.
Employers that participate in the E-Verify program must use E-Verify consistently and without regard to an employee’s citizenship, immigration status, or national origin to avoid violating 8 U.S.C. § 1324b or the E-Verify rules. Discrimination in the E-Verify process, such as requiring a DHS-issued document from all non-U.S. Citizens to create an E-Verify case, violates 8 U.S.C. § 1324b and the E-Verify rules. An employer’s failure to ensure proper completion and retention of Forms I-9 may subject the employer to civil money penalties, and, in some cases, criminal penalties.
How many years will an i9 last?
Only when an employee stops working for you should you calculate how much longer you must keep their Form I-9. Federal regulations state you must retain a Form I-9 for each person you hire for three years after the date of hire, or one year after the date employment ends, whichever is later.
Any legal analysis, legislative updates or other content and links should not be construed as legal or professional advice or a substitute for such advice. If you require legal or professional advice, kindly contact an attorney or other suitable professional advisor. Kelly helps employers of all sizes meet their staffing needs by handling the immigration issues they face in hiring foreign nationals and moving employees around the globe. Given the increased enforcement of immigration-related laws this year, employers should use particular care when handling Form I-9 and other immigration-related employment processes and practices.
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A new 15-page set of instructions is available for the new Form I-9. Additionally, an updated Handbook for Employers, a valuable resource for those handling Form I-9 issues, is available on USCIS’s website. Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States. Laurence Keir-Thomas and Amelia Haynes discuss UK immigration system changes in response to health and social care sector labour shortages. Alisa Bartholdy discusses changes to requirements for the continuous residence period leading to ILR.
- By January 22, 2017, all employers must use only this version, which is dated November 14, 2016.
- The OSC can help workers by calling employers and explaining proper verification practices and, when necessary, by providing victims of discrimination with charge forms.
- The form remains valid right from the date the employee was hired and till the date of the employment termination.
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