I-9/E-Verify

By: Dave Fowler

Welcome to the TALX blog focused on the Form I-9 and E-Verify. As you may know there are many changes occurring with the I-9 and E-Verify in 2009. On April 3, 2009 the new I-9 form went into effect. With this new form there are some big changes such as:

• The U.S. citizen and national citizenship statuses have been separated so there are now four citizenship statuses instead of three.
• Expired documents may not longer be used to complete the I-9.
• E-Verify is updated to not accept expired documents.

It is important to note that to update or reverify an I-9 completed on a previous Form I-9, you must complete a new I-9 using the new form.

The second major change scheduled to go into effect May 21, 2009 is the FAR rule that requires Federal contractors with a covered Federal contract to use E-Verify for all new hires and existing employees assigned to the contract. There is an option for the Federal contractor to submit all existing employees hired after November 6, 1986 to E-Verify. This option is very useful for employers who a) cannot easily track which employees work on covered Federal contracts and/or b) want to avoid employee tracking altogether and simply verify all existing employees and be done.

Here are some links for more information and to be kept up to date on changes to the Form I-9 and E-Verify. It is very handy to subscribe to the email notifications from these sites.

• http://www.dhs.gov/e-verify - This will take you to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services site. Here you can sign up for email updates, access documentation about E-Verify, and read the FAQs.
• http://www.cis.org – This will take you to the Center for Immigration Studies site which covers immigration issues. You can sign up for email updates and read blogs.
• http://www.google.com – Sign up for email updates at Google News. You can use E-Verify as your key word to be kept up on E-Verify news and blogs.