Last year, Homeland Security Investigations and Immigration and Customs Enforcement served 2400 notices of inspection and fined companies in excess of $10 Million.  These notices also included over 700 arrests, including owners, managers and human resource personnel all from complaints of unfair labor practices, mostly on undocumented workers, or falsely documented workers.  There are steps in place to verify and identify employment eligibility of all workers.  Traditionally, this was done with the I-9 form, with each employer making sure that documents are valid.  This type of verification can be harmful if employees are using fraudulent documents.  Immigration and Customs Enforcement has developed a verification package for companies to use called E-Verify.  This program helps eliminate risk by verifying immigration status of employees.  Also, companies should be aware that the current I-9 form expired last month.  You can get more information here, or contact a representative of Managepoint.

Until further notice, employers should continue using the Form I-9 currently available on the forms section of http://www.uscis.gov. This form should continue to be used even after the OMB control number expiration date of August 31, 2012 has passed. USCIS will provide updated information about the new version of the Form I-9 as it becomes available.