New Form I-9 to Verify Employment Eligibility

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released a new Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification form.  The new Form I-9 takes employment eligibility verification out of the realm of paper documentation and provides new electronic enhancements, such as:

• Drop-down functionality for filling in lists and selecting dates;
• Prompts on certain fields to ensure information is entered correctly;
• Additional room to allow for multiple preparers and translators;
• Embedded instructions for completing each field;
• Buttons that will allow users to access the instructions electronically, print the form, and clear the form to start over;
• A dedicated area to enter additional information that employers currently have to jot in the margins of the form;
• A barcode unique to each form to identify it for audit purposes.

Employers may continue to use the current version of the Form I-9 (the one with a revision date of 3/8/2013N) until January 21, 2017.  After January 21, 2017, all previous version of the Form I-9 will no longer be valid.

These changes, in addition to the recent increase in penalties for employment verification errors, are of significant importance to employers and Human Resources professionals.