Archive for the ‘USCIS’ Category

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP), which conducts compliance audits of firms with federal contracts, has announced that it will no longer inspect I-9 employee eligibility forms during its visits. Under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), OFCCP had previously verified I-9 compliance and reported violations to ICE. [...]

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and USCIS Director Alejandro Mayorkas yesterday (Nov. 10, 2010) announced the addition of a passport and passport card verification feature on the government’s online E-Verify employee eligibility system. “U.S. passport photo matching is another in the long line of enhancements we have made to improve the integrity of the E-Verify [...]

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials report that they conducted 2,200 on-site audits of businesses in FY 2010 to verify employees’ eligibility to work in the United States, resulting in a record $50 million-plus in fines. ICE, the enforcement wing of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), no longer stages round-ups of suspected illegal immigrants [...]

On Sept. 15, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials sent out another 500 notices of inspection (NOIs) to businesses suspected of employing illegal immigrants. ICE agents will be auditing these firms’ I-9 employment verification documents. Affected businesses were given three business days to prepare for the inspection, so the audits should already be under way. [...]

The nation’s restaurant industry, which reportedly employs illegal immigrants for at least 20 percent of its back-of-the-house workforce, is suddenly coming under the purview of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdowns, according to the New York Times. ICE is now holding employers’ feet to the ground if it audits a workplace and finds illegal immigrants [...]

Beginning this week, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) is expanding the photo matching portion of its E-Verify program to include U.S. passports and driver’s license data.   This change will be effective at the start of September and will give companies and organizations that use E-Verify the capability of comparing photos from [...]

Employers have three business days after hiring someone to collect information and complete the I-9 employment eligibility verification form, whether on paper or using the E-Verify electronic system. This has long been known as the "three-day rule," but it has–according to a recent United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) statement–often been misinterpreted. According to [...]

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which operates the online E-Verify employment eligibility verification program, has announced some enhancements and improvements to the user experience, including a home page redesign. E-Verify is an extension of the former Basic Pilot program that allows employers to check the work-in-the-U.S. eligibility status of new hires by going online [...]

Think that maintaining properly vetted I-9 forms on your employees isn’t that big a deal? The answer –it is a big deal–has been driven home forcefully to management at Columbia Farms in Columbia, S.C. After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in 2008 discovered hundreds of illegal immigrants working at the poultry plant, most [...]