U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) submitted to the Federal Register an interim final rule to revise Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. Among other changes, the rule narrows the list of acceptable identity and employment authorization documents. 

The rule and the revised Form I-9 were published in the Federal Register on December 17 and will take effect February 2, 2009. 

Documents removed from and added to List A
USCIS has removed three documents from List A that can no longer be used to establish both identity and employment authorization because these documents are now obsolete:

• Form I-688 Employment Authorization Document
• Form I-688A Employment Authorization Document
• Form I-688B Employment Authorization Document 

USCIS has added three documents to List A:

• A temporary I-551 printed notation on a machine-readable immigrant visa in addition to the foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp
• A passport from the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) or the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) with a valid Form I-94 or Form I-94A indicating nonimmigrant admission under the Compact of Free Association Between the United States and the FSM or RMI
• A U.S. passport card

Expired documents of any type are not acceptable documentation for the revised Form I-9.

Employee attestation section
In Section 1 of the revised Form I-9 – ”citizen of the United States” and “noncitizen national of the United States” — will now be two separate categories. Noncitizen nationals are persons born in American Samoa, certain former citizens of the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands and certain children of noncitizen nationals born abroad.

Availability of the revised Form I-9
Beginning 45 days after publication of the rules in the Federal Register, the USCIS Web site — www.uscis.gov — will offer the revised Form I-9 and an updated Handbook for Employers, Instructions for Completing the Form I-9 (M-274), to reflect the revisions to Form I-9.

Click here for FAQs about the revised Form I-9.

Tags: I-9, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, USCIS