After hearing Julie A. Pace address our chapter this month, I'm always inspired to share key takeaways that may affect my customers and friends. As the attendance was less than 1/3 of our chapter membership, I'm concerned for everyone else. Especially those firms that may have been acquired, have a dispersed workforce, possibly closed remote offices, and aren't sending members to our luncheons.
The I-9 form issue potential can impact us all but for those with employees working remotely the risk and timeliness is of paramount importance. Here's what your HR team may have read, but have they completed all their in-person interviews (updating old "covid" I-9s with the necessary annotations)? Here's the exact wording...
DHS Ends Form I-9 Requirement Flexibility - 5/5/23
COVID-19 temporary flexibilities for Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, will end on July 31, 2023. U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently announced that employers must complete in-person physical document inspections for employees whose documents were inspected remotely during the temporary flexibilities by August 30, 2023.
This new announcement gives employers additional time to complete in-person physical inspection of identity and employment authorization documents, and annotate the Form I-9 for this population. These flexibilities were initially announced in March 2020 and updated in March 2021. See I-9 Central Questions and Answers for more information.
DHS published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for alternative procedures allowing remote document examination for Form I-9 last year. DHS anticipates publishing a Final Rule in the Federal Register that will implement this proposal.
And here's the slide from Julies Presentation on what to do:
Hope to see you all in Denver at Convention this July!
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Carol Hagen
carol.hagen@uscad.com
(602) 570-7289
CFMA member since 1997
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