New I-9 Form Required

The Employment Eligibility Verification process has been amended to require employers to use a new I-9 form to verify employment eligibility. The new regulation implementing the revised form narrows the list of acceptable identity documents and provides that expired documents are not acceptable forms of identification. The regulation also adds to List A of the Form I-9 foreign passports containing specially-marked machine-readable visas and documentation for certain citizens of the Federal States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The new regulation makes additional technical changes to update the list of acceptable identifying documents, the most significant of which is the express statement that Social Security account number cards are acceptable documents under List C unless the card “specifies on the face that the issuance of the card does not authorize employment in the United States.”

The Handbook for Employers, Instructions for Completing the Form I-9 (M-274) and the new I-9 Form are available on the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services website at http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis.