Only eleven years after the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA) was passed, reducing the number of different documents (by five, and actually adding one) that an employer may recognize as meeting the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act list of acceptable documents, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued an updated I-9 to reflect these changes. As of November 7, 2007, the new form with the revised date of June 5, 2007 must be used when documenting the right for newly hired employees to work in the U.S. As an employer, you must use the new form from now on, but do not need to re-verify any existing employees already having completed the I-9. Failure to use the new form (after the 30-day grace period from date of publication of Notice) may result in penalties as enforced by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).A couple of items worth noting:
• The employee is not required to provide their Social Security Number in Section 1 of Form I-9, unless the employer participates in the E-Verify Program.
• When re-verifying employees, the new Form I-9 should be used.
• While the form is available in Spanish, only Puerto Rican employers may use it for record-keeping purposes. U.S. employers elsewhere may only use the form for interpretive or translation purposes, but must complete the English version.
The updated version of Form I-9 can be found at: http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/I-9.pdf.
For information on the exact documents now accepted, and for the new explanatory Employer Handbook (M-274), go to: http://www.uscis.gov.
As always, please let us at HR Answers know if you have questions, or want to talk about this change in new-hire documentation.
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