A federal judge has rejected a request by the federal government to push up the timeline for deciding a case involving a controversial rule on the steps employers should take when they receive a No-Match letter—indicating that the information submitted for an employee fails to match government records. Now, the decision won’t be handed down until after Barack Obama becomes president.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) informs thousands of employers every year via “no-match” letters that certain employees’ names and corresponding Social Security numbers provided on the employers’ Form W-2 wage reports do not match SSA’s records. As many as 4 percent of approximately 250 million wage reports the SSA receives each year belong to employees whose names and corresponding Social Security numbers do not match SSA records.
The No-Match Rule details steps employers may take when they receive a “no match” letter and guarantees that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will consider employers who follow those steps to have acted reasonably. If an employer follows the safe harbor procedures in good faith, ICE will not use the employer’s receipt of a no-match letter as evidence to find that the employer violated the employment provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act by knowingly employing unauthorized workers.
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In other immigration news, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has submitted an interim final rule that revises the Employment Eligibility Verification (Form I-9) by narrowing the list of acceptable identity documents and further specifying that expired documents are not considered acceptable forms of identification. Employers must complete a Form I-9 for all newly hired employees to verify their identity and authorization to work in the United States.
In announcing the new form, the agency said that an expansive document list makes it more difficult for employers to verify valid and acceptable forms and single out false documents compromising the effectiveness and security of the Form I-9 process. The agency also said that the changes included in the interim final rule will significantly improve the security of the employment eligibility verification process.