Holloway Human Resource Consulting

The USCIS announced this week that it has revised the Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 again and that U.S. employers must begin using the new version by Feb. 2, 2009.  All U.S. employers are required to fill out an Employment Eligibility Verification (I-9) form within three days after hiring each new employee.  The Form I-9 was revised last year.

What Changed?

The revised I-9 makes clear that employees can’t show expired documents as identification and eliminates three documents from the list of approved documents that employees can present to verify both their identity and employment (List A):

• Form I-688, Temporary Resident Card 

• Form I-688A, Employment Authorization Card 

·        Form I-688B, Employment Authorization Card.

USCIS no longer issues these cards and all that were in circulation have expired.

The new Form I-9 includes revisions to the employee attestation section, and the addition of the new U.S. Passport Card to List A.  The rule also adds to List A foreign passports containing specially marked machine-readable visas and documentation for certain citizens of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).

U.S. employers must begin using the revised I-9 form for new hires and to reverify employees with expiring documents—starting no later than Feb. 2.  The USCIS states employers who continue to use the current edition of the I-9 form (dated 06/05/2007) on or after Feb. 2 may be subject to civil penalties.

The new I-9 Form and the USCIS Handbook for Employers, Instructions for Completing the Form I-9 (M-274) will be available 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.  Links to both will be available on our website when they are released, so keep reading HR Update for the changes.

You can click here to review the Questions and Answers section that has been updated on the USCIS website.