Blog Post: New I-9 Form Rollout Delayed

Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) revised the Form I-9 by amending the documents acceptable for verification of employment eligibility. The new form I-9 was to go into effect today (02/02/2009).

In it's review of all pending actions initiated by the outgoing administration, the Obama Administration has  announced a delay in implementation of the new form until April 3rd. The public commenting period on the proposed change has been reopened until March 4th.

Employers who were set to begin using the new form today should continue using the old form. In fact, they could face civil fines for using the new form before April 3, 2009.

The most significant change to proposed Form I-9 is the requirement that all documents presented during the I-9 verification process must be unexpired. Currently, certain documents, including U.S. passports or drivers’ licenses can be presented as proof of identity and/or work eligibility without regard of their expiration date.

The revised Form I-9 also eliminates Temporary Resident and older versions of Employment Authorization Cards (Forms I-688, I-688A, and I-688B) from the list of documents sufficient to establish both identity and employment authorization (referred to as "List A"), since these cards no longer are issued and any outstanding cards would have now expired.