U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“CIS”)
As indicated earlier, CIS has released an updated version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, in connection with the new interim final regulation announced late last year. This new form is now scheduled to take effect on April 3, 2009, and it revises the List A documents, or the list of documents that may be used to establish identity and employment authorization. The new rule also details that employers may accept a foreign passport annotated with the machine-readable immigrant visa, in addition to the I-551 permanent residence stamp and card that are currently acceptable, as well as eliminates certain obsolete forms of employment authorization documents. The rule further instructs that expired documents will no longer be acceptable for I-9 verification purposes, and if a document does not contain an expiration date (i.e., Social Security card), the employer should consider it unexpired. Until April 3, 2009, employers should continue to use the June 5, 2007 edition of the form. Effective April 3, 2009, employers should use the February 2, 2009 edition of the form. Both editions of the form are available at http://www.uscis.gov/i-9. As background, employers must use Form I-9 to verify the identity and employment eligibility of all new employees (including U.S. citizens) at the time of hire.

This article was prepared by Fulbright's Immigration Practice Group. Should you have any questions concerning the above or any other employment-based immigration matter, please do not hesitate to contact Cindy Kang, Partner and Head of the Immigration and Nationality Practice Group (214 855 7499 or ckang@fulbright.com); Jacquelyn P. Maroney (512 536 2420 or jmaroney@fulbright.com); Brenda J. Oliver (202 662 4717 or boliver@fulbright.com) or Benjamin J. Schatz (512 536 4519 or bschatz@fulbright.com). Thank you.