Employers Have Until Feb. 11 to Verify Work Eligibility

E-Verify, the employment verification system operated by the US government, is back online. Participating employers who hired new workers during the government’s 35-day shutdown can now create cases for these hires.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which manages the program, announced the reinstatement this week and said employers must create new cases by Feb. 11 for all employees hired while the E-Verify system was unavailable. Use the hire date from the I-9, and for cases created more than 3 days after the employee started work, choose “E-Verify Not Available” from the menu when asked to explain the delay.

There’s also an explanation of how to handle tentative nonconfirmations. If you’ve been advised by your employee they intend to contest a TNC, “you must revise the date by which your employee must contact the Social Security Administration (SSA) or DHS to begin resolving the TNC,” says the USCIS notice. You do that by adding 10 federal business days to the date of the employee’s Referral Date Confirmation notice. Give a copy of the revised notice to the employee.

There also instructions for employees who were unable to contest a TNC because of the shutdown.

As a previous TLNT article reported, even though E-Verify was unavailable between Dec. 22 and the beginning of this week, employers still had to complete Form I-9 for all new hires.