United States: Tips On Completing The New I-9 And E-Verify

The American Immigration Lawyers Association's Verification and Documentation Liaison Committee stays in frequent contact with U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services (USCIS) on matters related to the Form I-9 and E-Verify. This Committee has provided some useful tips to employers completing the new version of the Form I-9 based on informal interpretations and advice recently provided by USCIS:

E-Verify Update:

In limited circumstances, an employee may indicate that he is an "alien authorized to work" and provide only passport information in Section 1 of the new Form I-9 (no A#/USCIS# or I-94# may be provided). When the employee does not provide a document containing the A#/USCIS# or I-94# for Section 2 of the Form I-9, an E-Verify employer will be unable to complete an E-Verify query. E-Verify requires either the A/USCIS# or an I-94# to process a query for an "alien authorized to work." E-Verify has indicated that these cases should be put "on hold" at this time to be processed after E-Verify is updated. When the system is ready to handle these cases, the employer can then run the queries with the notation "awaiting E-Verify update" when asked why the query is being run late.

Section 1 Completed on the Old Version Prior to January 22, 2017:

When an employee completes Section 1 of the 03/08/13 version of the Form I-9 prior to January 22, 2017, and the employer does not complete Section 2 of the Form I-9 until January 22, 2017, or later, USCIS has advised that the old version of the Form I-9 should continue to be used. (Section 2 of the Form I-9 should be completed on the old version of the Form I-9, even after January 22, if Section 1 was completed prior to January 22 on the legacy version of the form.) Note that this guidance is only for initial completion of the I-9 form. Any Section 3 re-verifications must be completed on the latest version of the I-9 form.

AILA Doc. No. 17013138

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.