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HR/Payroll Solutions
Acceptable List A Documents for I-9 Forms
Q: Do we have to make a current employee fill out another I-9 form if he or she completed the form using one of the five items from List A that are no longer valid?
A: When the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) released the new I-9 form on Nov. 7, 2007, you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief that, in fact, not much had changed. One change that was made was the formalization of acceptable List A documents. The INS (now USCIS) had originally removed these documents on March 30 1998, but did not reflect this change on the I-9 form itself for nearly 10 years.
Documents removed were:
- A certificate of U.S. citizenship.
- A certificate of naturalization.
- An alien registration receipt card.
- An unexpired re-entry permit.
- An unexpired refugee travel document.
With this change, a new question came to the forefront of establishing employment eligibility: Are employers compliant even though they've been using the removed documents for nearly 10 years?
The good news is that when the INS published the interim rule in 1998 eliminating these five List A documents, they stated that employers would not be penalized for accepting documents from the then current I-9 form. Now that the USCIS has published the new I-9 form, the USCIS has stated that List A document requirements will not be applied retroactively. Employers will not be required to go back and re-establish work eligibility criteria for employees who used one of the old List A documents for I-9 form completion. Further, employers will not be required to complete new I-9 forms for all of their current employees.
Another important change to note is that employees are no longer required to put their Social Security number on I-9 forms. Employers are still permitted, however, to request an employee's Social Security number for payroll purposes.
The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) requires employers to verify their employees' eligibility to work in the United States through the use of the I-9 form. An employer is required to complete this form within three days of an employee's start date; the employee is required to provide the employer with documents that establish the employee's identity and his or her authorization to work in the United States.
IRCA also imposes penalties on employers that fail to complete or retain I-9 documents for their employees, and such employers can face penalties of not less than $110 and not more than $1,100 for each employee who has a missing or incomplete I-9 form.
The USCIS web site has an electronic version of the new I-9 form as well as the new I-9 handbook.
Article by Angie Collis, PHR, is an HR knowledge advisor in SHRM's HR Knowledge Center from http://www.shrm.org/kc/solutions/articles/archives/CMS_024102.asp#P-8_0
