On January 31, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) published the Form I-9 Federal Register notice announcing a new version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification.  This new version contains minor changes to the form and its instructions.  Employers should begin using this updated form as of January 31.

The notice provides employers additional time to make necessary updates and adjust their business processes.  Employers may continue using the prior version of the form (Rev. 07/17/2017 N) until April 30, 2020.  After that date, they can only use the new form with the 10/21/2019 version date.  The version date is located in the lower left corner of the form.

USCIS made the following changes to the form and its instructions:

Form:

Revised the Country of Issuance field in Section 1 and the Issuing Authority field (when selecting a foreign passport) in Section 2 to add Eswatini and Macedonia, North per those countries’ recent name changes.  (Note: This change is only visible when completing the fillable Form I-9 on a computer.)

Instructions:

• Clarified who can act as an authorized representative on behalf of an employer
• Updated USCIS website addresses
• Provided clarifications on acceptable documents for Form I-9
• Updated the process for requesting paper Forms I-9
• Updated the DHS Privacy Notice

For more information, visit I-9 Central or join a free Form I-9 webinar.

Source:  USCIS