February

"E-Verify: Employee Re-verification - At present, employers are unable to re-verify an existing employee 's work authorization in E-Verify, and in fact, must not do so.

SCIS is working on developing a re-verification process for E-Verify. E-Verify: Employee Rehire - In cases where an employee is rehired, but did not previously have his or her employment authorization verified through E-Verify or, if verified, did not receive an employment authorized result, the employer must create an E-Verify case for the rehired employee. E-Verify: Correcting Typographical Errors - Where incorrect information is entered while creating a case in E-Verify, the employer will need to create a new case with the correct information for the employee.

If the case is not yet closed, the employer should close the case by selecting the statement, ""The case is invalid because the data entered is incorrect."" If the case is already closed, the employer should make a note either on the E-Verify case details page or on the employee 's Form I-9 explaining that a second case was created because the first case contained incorrect information. Source: Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, LLP"

M&A Transactional lawyers have to cover a lot of ground in their deals: employment, tax, commercial real estate, intellectual property, and ERISA laws to name a few and in many cases I-9 immigration compliance is not included. When representing the acquirer, attorneys are advised to include an indemnification clause in the deal documents to protect their client from I-9 fines for forms they inherit that contain substantive violations. If representing the seller, be sure to add an expiration date for the indemnity clause. After the deal closes, the buyer can remediate I-9 forms with substantive violations, and you don 't want your clients on the hook indefinitely if the acquiring company fails to do so in a timely manner. In a recent case we discovered that a manufacturing firm being purchased did not use e-Verify and had inadvertently accepted fake identity documents from hundreds of hourly employees across seven states which meant they would likely have to be terminated. The likelihood of losing hundreds of skilled employees materially affected the price our client was willing to pay for the business they were acquiring. In the end, the deal closed, but the client paid a lot less for the assets of the business than they had originally planned. In addition to vetting I-9 compliance of a target company during the acquisition due diligence, there are other related topics worth asking a question or two about that can save your client from big headaches down the road.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) myE-Verify program provides a website from USCIS that gives U.S. job-seekers resources and tools to learn about and participate in the E-Verify process. Currently, myE-Verify accounts are available in Arizona, Idaho, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia. For more information about my E-Verify, please visit http:||www.uscis.gov|mye-verify|about-mye-verify