Month: November 2007

The following is a USCIS Update on the new I-9 Form:

November 7, 2007

USCIS Revises Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9
Revision will eliminate certain documents for employment verification

WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that a revised Employment Eligibility Verification Form (I-9) is now available for use. All employers are required to complete a Form I-9 for each employee hired in the United States.
The revision seeks to achieve full compliance with the document reduction requirements of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA), which reduced the number of documents employers may accept from newly hired employees during the employment eligibility verification process. The revised Form I-9 is a further step in USCIS’ ongoing work toward reducing the number of documents used to confirm identity and work eligibility.

Key to the revision is the removal of five documents for proof of both identity and employment ligibility. They include: Certificate of U.S. Citizenship (Form N-560 or N-570); Certificate of aturalization (Form N-550 or N-570); Alien Registration Receipt Card (Form I-151); the nexpired Reentry Permit (Form I-327); and the unexpired Refugee Travel Document (Form I-571). The forms were removed because they lack features to help deter counterfeiting, tampering, and fraud.

Additionally, the most recent version of the Employment Authorization Document (Form I-766) was added to List A of the List of Acceptable Documents on the revised form. The revised list now includes: a U.S. passport (unexpired or expired); a Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551); an unexpired foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp; an unexpired Employment Authorization Document that contains a photograph (Form I-766, I-688, I-688A, or I-688B); and an unexpired foreign passport with an unexpired Arrival-Departure Record (Form I-94) for nonimmigrant aliens authorized to work for a specific employer.

Employers are encouraged to start using the revised Form I-9 immediately. The form will
become effective once the notice is published in the Federal Register. Both the revised form and the “Handbook for Employers, Instructions for Completing the Form I-9” are available online at www.uscis.gov.

To order forms, call USCIS toll-free at 1-800-870-3676. For forms and information on
immigration laws, regulations, and procedures, call the National Customer Service Center at 1-800-375-5283.

– USCIS –
www.uscis.gov

The USCIS has created a new edition of the I-9 – Employment Eligibility Verification form.

I will publish more details on the new form tomorrow.

The DHS today released a Fact Sheet:  Border Security and Immigration Enforcement.

According to a poll cited by Angus-Reid.com: “The majority of people in the United States would support a law making it possible for undocumented immigrants to legalize their status under certain conditions, according to a poll by TNS released by the Washington Post and ABC News. 51 per cent of respondents would support a program offering citizenship to illegal residents if they pay a fine and meet a set of requirements, down one point since June.”

Don’t expect anything of the sort to happen until 2009, but it’s an interesting contrast to the repetitive anti-immigration noise filling the cable news channel broadcasts. Watching the likes of Lou Dobbs and his nonsense polls, one would think that nobody in this country supports legalizing the undocumented.

It is also refreshing that the level of support for legalizing the undocumented has not changed much since June 2007, despite politicians and talking heads using immigration as a wedge issue. As I have written in the past, immigration is a losing issue regardless of what position one takes. The Presidential hopefuls should tread cautiously and watch what they say – there is still a full year to go before the elections.

Our firm, Maged & Rost, PC, will be hosting a FREE International Recruitment Seminar in conjunction with Quality Human Service Professionals (QHSP) on Wednesday, November 14, 2007 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm. The seminar will be geared towards meeting the recruitment demands of non-profit human service organizations and will take place in Burlington, Massachusetts.

Information will be provided on the following:

The H-1B Visa

Qualifying for Cap Exempt Status

Comparison of H1 and J1 programs

Designing an International Recruitment Program for your agency

Attracting degree-qualified direct support professionals

Review current applicant profiles from the UK and Ireland

Space is limited so if a representative from your organization is interested in attending the seminar or would like more information, please e-mail me at maged@magedrost.com. A light breakfast will be provided.

According to an opinion piece on the dailypress.com: “The rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria — fueled by ratings-hungry cable-television hotheads and leading Republican presidential hopefuls — is a dangerous trend: It may lead to a Hispanic intifada that may rock this nation in the not-so-distant future.”

On a related note, when I search for newsworthy articles on immigration, the U.S. appears to be only one of several countries currently struggling with the issue. The debate has recently intensified in the United Kingdom, France and our neighbor to the North, Canada.

According to AILA:

On 11/01/07, during a conference between House and Senate conferees to reconcile differences between their respective versions of the Labor-HHS-Education (H.R. 3043) and the Military Construction-VA (H.R. 2642) appropriations measures, two major provisions have been reportedly stricken although no text of the conference report will be available until November 5.

AILA member action, including a letter from AILA President Kathleen Campbell Walker to Speaker Pelosi demanding that the H-1B fee increase be removed, was heeded as the conferees have stricken that provision from the conference report. In a related action, the conferees also removed the amendment added by the Senate that would have recaptured unused green cards for schedule A occupations. Because a presidential veto threat still looms over this conference report, stay tuned to InfoNet for the latest news as it become available. (AILA InfoNet Doc. No. 07110262 (posted Nov. 2, 2007))

According to an article in the San Jose Mercury News:  “For the first time in the most current wave of immigration, U.S. Census Bureau figures show that 70 percent of California’s Mexican population are U.S. citizens, blunting widespread belief the state is overrun by illegal immigrants.”

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal:  “Last week Mr. Grassley, the Iowa Republican, slipped an amendment into a spending bill that would tax businesses that hire skilled immigrants an additional $3,500 per visa to a total of $5,000 each. According to the National Foundation for American Policy, this represents a $3.1 billion tax increase over five years on some of America’s fastest growing companies.”

An interesting article from Colorado Media Matters reviews how one talk-show host criticized the article about how children were harmed by the recent immigration raids.

According to the article: “On November 1, 630 KHOW-AM host Peter Boyles criticized four Colorado newspapers for publishing articles that day about an Urban Institute and National Council of La Raza study on the impact of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raids on children of illegal immigrants. Boyles accused the Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, the Greeley Tribune, and the Fort Collins Coloradoan of practicing “advocacy journalism” by “tak[ing] something funded by La Raza and us[ing] it as a news story.” However, Boyles failed to mention that in addition to reporting the study’s findings, the newspapers all included criticism of the study from immigration officials and other sources.”

Virtually everyone reporting on the immigration debate is practicing “advocacy journalism”.  Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin are names that come to mind as not exactly being “fair and balanced” in their coverage of the issue.