Archive for the ‘USCIS’ Category

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are making repeat visits to past I-9 offenders to see if they've corrected their errors and are now in compliance with the employment eligibility verification process. If not, fines can be trebled. The revisits are to those companies whose I-9 audits revealed violations within the past three years. If [...]

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and its Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Discrimination announced that the University of California San Diego Medical Center has reached a "six-figure" settlement over its practice of requiring excessive documentation from noncitizen employees during the Form I-9 work authorization process. Specifically, the DOJ says UCSD committed "document abuse"  by [...]

On New Year's Day, an E-Verify mandate took hold in Georgia for firms with 500 or more employees. The mandate will progressively expand so that, by July 2012, firms with 100-499 employees will be required to employ E-Verify, and by next January all companies with 11 or more employees will be covered. Companies with 10 [...]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials issued 2,393 form I-9 audit notices in 2011, a 375-percent increase from 2008, the last year of the Bush administration. In addition, ICE arrested and prosecuted 196 business owners, executives and human resource managers for immigration violations in 2011, surpassing the previous high of 135 in 2008. The trend [...]

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced the filing of a lawsuit against the University of California, San Diego Medical Center, alleging that the medical center discriminated in the employment eligibility verification process against people who are authorized to work in the United States. The department’s independent investigation revealed that the medical center engaged in [...]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has issued a new wave of notifications to companies whose I-9 records it intends to audit. The Form I-9 is used to record the eligibility of a company's employees to work in the United States legally. So far, in fiscal 2011 ICE has conducted 2,496 I-9 audits, up from 503 [...]

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on Oct. 25 began issuing redesigned forms I-766, the Employment Authorization Document (EAD) that establishes both identity and authorization to work in the United States for purposes of I-9 registration. The EAD is thus an "A List" document that completes the I-9 verification-to-work process in and of [...]

Earlier this year, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) sent out 1,000 letters announcing that the recipient companies would be audited for Form I-9 (employment eligibility) audits. To date, with the service announcing it will target another 1,000 as soon as it frees up resources, some big names have been audited and found [...]

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and its Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices is suing a California medical services firm, alleging a pattern of requiring job applicants to provide forms not required for Form I-9 work eligibility status. The suit springs from a February 2010 incident in which the company rejected a [...]

The online E-Verify Self-Check program offered by the United States Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) has been expanded to 16 more states. Self-Check is open to individuals to verify that government databases contain the correct documentation to authorize them to work in the United States. The new states are California, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, [...]