After receiving more than 6,000 comments, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) has further revised the Form I-9 used by all employers to verify and document the legal right of their employees to work in the United States. The old I-9 expired on Aug. 31, 2012, but the USCIS has deemed use of the expired form perfectly legal until it can get the new form finalized, approved and issued (sometime this fall, it's expected).
Some of the changes detailed in the August update include:
- Expansion of the form to two pages.
- New but optional email and telephone number fields.
- Spaces for barcodes on both pages marked "do not write in this space" with no explanation of what the barcodes might be for.
- A "Stop Sign" at the document of page one to indicate that page two is for employer use only and should not be used by the applicant or employee.
- Perjury language repositioned and simplified for better understanding.
Information on the new Form I-9, which was updated in late August, is available at Regulations.gov.