USWorkVisa.com News Archive
for December, 2007

A Social Security Administration (SSA) spokesperson reportedly has stated that the SSA will not send out no-match letters this year to employers, in response to an October 10, 2007, preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California that enjoined and restrained the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the SSA from implementing the final rule, “Safe-Harbor Procedures for Employers Who Receive a No-Match Letter.” The preliminary injunction did not preclude the SSA from sending out its traditional no-match letters without the final rule language. According to sources, the SSA is unlikely to send out no-match letters until spring 2008 at the earliest, when the DHS has said it plans to revise the rule. SSA said it did not have sufficient time to revise the no-match letter in 2007. The SSA sends no-match letters, which detail discrepancies between SSA data and information sent in by employers, to approximately 138,000 employers each year concerning as many as nine million employees.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has revised the I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification Form, to be required beginning December 26, as a first step toward achieving the document reduction goals under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and “as a further step in its ongoing work toward reducing the number of documents used to confirm identity and work eligibility,” the agency said.

The most significant change to the I-9 is the elimination of the following five documents from List A of the List of Acceptable Documents:

• Certificate of U.S. Citizenship (N-560 or N-561)
• Certificate of Naturalization (N-550 or N-570)
• Alien Registration Receipt Card (I-151)
• Unexpired Reentry Permit (I-327)
• Unexpired Refugee Travel Document (I-571)

One document was added to List A of the List of Acceptable Documents:

• Unexpired Employment Authorization Document (I-766)

All the Employment Authorization Documents with photographs that are in circulation are now included as one item on List A:

• I-688, I-688A, I-688B, I-766

Instructions for the I-9 also now state that the employee is not obliged to provide the Social Security Number in Section 1 of the I-9, unless he or she is employed by an employer who participates in E-Verify (formerly Basic Pilot). The section on Photocopying and Retaining Form I-9 now includes information about electronically signing and retaining I-9 forms.

Employers should begin using the amended I-9 “(Rev. 06/05/07)N” immediately for all individuals hired on or after November 7, 2007. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it “recognizes that employers should be afforded a period of time to transition to the amended Form I-9.” The DHS therefore will not seek penalties against an employer for using a previous version of the I-9 during a transition period ending on December 26, 2007. After the transition period, employers who fail to use the revised I-9 may be subject to penalties.

Employers only need to complete the new I-9 for new employees. Employers do not need to complete new forms for existing employees, but employers must use the revised I-9 when their employees require reverification.

Copies of the documents that are acceptable under the new I-9 requirements may be obtained in a brochure, “Guide to Selected U.S. Travel and Identity Documents” (M-396), which may be ordered in bulk from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, National Distribution Center, P.O. Box 68912, Indianapolis, IN 46268; fax: (317) 290-3046.

Other resources:

1. Handbook for Employers (M-274)
2. Details re: the revised I-9
3. Deadline Reminder
4. USCIS Federal Register notice dated November 26, 2007

Recent findings about the Web-based Basic Pilot program, now called E-Verify, have been released. Among other things, the new report notes that employers are satisfied with many aspects of the new online version of the former Basic Pilot program. Also, the accuracy of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) database used for verification has “improved substantially” since the start of Basic Pilot. Further improvements are needed, however, the report notes, especially if the program is mandated nationally.

Most importantly, the report states, the database used for verification “is still not sufficiently up to date to meet the [Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996] requirement for accurate verification, especially for naturalized citizens.” The report notes that USCIS and the Social Security Administration accommodate this problem by providing for a manual review of these cases, which is “time-consuming and can result in discrimination against work-authorized foreign-born persons during the period that the verification is ongoing, if employers do not follow procedures designed to protect employee rights.”

E-Verify allows employers to get automated confirmation of a newly hired employee’s work authorization after an Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) has been completed. Employers who sign up to participate complete the I-9 process as usual, but then enter and submit I-9 information through a Web-based computer program to the Social Security Administration (SSA) database. If the SSA does not have sufficient information to confirm work authorization status, queries are sent to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for confirmation. If more information is required to complete the confirmation process, the employer is asked to have the employee contact the SSA or USCIS to provide the needed information.

Other related information is available here.

According to a Department of State cable (No. 155679) sent to the field on November 13, 2007, consular posts are now able to access the details of approved nonimmigrant visa petitions in a new report called “PIMS” (Petition Information Management Service). The Kentucky Consular Center (KCC) has ceased e-mailing scanned copies of approved petitions to posts. The electronic PIMS record created by the KCC will now be the primary source of evidence to be used in determining petition approval. This applies to all nonimmigrant petition-based visa categories (H, L, O, P, and Q). The PIMS Petition Report contains a record of all petitioners recorded by the KCC as having approved petitions since 2004. In addition, many of the records contain information from KCC’s Fraud Prevention Unit.

Reportedly, this unanticipated change has resulted in four-day delays at many posts from interview to visa issuance for these categories. The Academy of Business Immigration Lawyers is monitoring the situation.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently released an updated list of active approved EB-5 “Regional Centers,” which are public or private entities approved to participate in the EB-5 immigrant investor program. The Regional Center program makes the investor program useful for those unable to invest the full $1 million by allowing $500,000 investments that require minimal hands-on involvement and are useful for those who do not have the time or resources to qualify their own business for this permanent residence program.