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On December 26^th, USCIS began requiring use of a new Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification Form. The Form I-9 must be completed by every employee in the country in order to demonstrate to an employer or certain recruiters and referrers the employee’s identity and that the employee is authorized to work in the United States .  

The Form I-9 is a creation of the 1986 immigration bill and has rarely changed over the years. Back in 1996, Congressed approved legislation reducing the number of documents that are acceptable to prove identity and employment authorization. The legacy INS passed a regulation carrying out the 1996 law, but it has taken ten years to actually update the form.  

On June 5, 2007, USCIS released the new Form I-9 and began requiring that this new version be used beginning December 26, 2007.  

Five documents have been removed from List A, the list of documents that serve to prove both identity and employment eligibility. They are  

     - Certificate of US Citizenship (Form N-560 or N-561)
- Certificate of Naturalization (Form N-550 or N-570)
- Alien Registration Receipt (Form I-151)
- Unexpired Reentry Permit (Form I-327)
- Unexpired Refugee Travel Document (Form I-571)  

An unexpired Employment Authorization Document was added to the list of acceptable List A documents and the other employment cards (I-688, I-688A, I-688B and I-766) have been consolidated as one item on List A.  

List A also changed to reflect that when an I-94 is coupled with an unexpired foreign passport, the I-94 must contain an endorsement showing the non-immigrant is authorized to work for the employer completing the Form I-94. The old Form I-9 only mentioned that the I-94 should indicate an employee had unexpired employment authorization, but did not tie that status to a particular employer.  

Employers may now only accept documents contained in the instructions on the new form. Employers re-verifying Forms I-9 for current or re-hired employees must use the new version of the form for re-verification. The employee would not have to fill out a new form, however. Rather, the employer would fill out the Section 3 re-verification section in the new form, write the employee’s name in Section 1 and attach the new form to the old Form I-9 in the employee’s Form I-9 file.  

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Congress has delayed a bill which would require people entering the US from Canada , Mexico or the Caribbean , to show a passport when arriving by land or sea.  According to CNN, the bill, which if signed into legislation, would not require visitors from these countries to show a passport if entering the U.S. by land or sea until June 2009.   

Despite the one-year delay, the Department of Homeland Security plans to require most people from the U.S. , Canada , Mexico , and the Caribbean to present a birth certificate or some other document establishing citizenship when they enter the U.S. on or after January 31, 2008.   

The delay stems from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who halted the requirement by one year by amending a budget bill Congress passed last week.  The passport requirement, according to Leahy, would hurt commerce between the U.S. and Canada while doing little to safeguard the country.  Leahy told CNN that the terrorists are "not going to come across with a valid passport" and that the passport requirement will only "stop the people who want to come to the United States to spend money and the people who want to involve themselves with business or travel, education, healthcare – whatever – between the U.S. and Canada," he said.  "It won’t deter a single terrorist."

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