The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced last Thursday that, due to system enhancements, E-Verify will be unavailable this weekend, from midnight EDT Friday, March 23, until 8 a.m. EDT Monday, March 26.
During this period of unavailability, employers will not be able to access their E-Verify accounts to perform any customary functions, including creating a new E-Verify case or being able to resolve E-Verify Tentative Nonconfirmations with the Department of Homeland Security or the Social Security Administration.
Recognizing that the unavailability of E-Verify has obvious impacts on employers, the USCIS will follow these policies during the outage (the following are quoted directly from the USCIS Fact Sheet, with minor edits):
- The "three-day rule" for creating E-Verify cases is suspended for cases affected by E-Verify's unavailability.
- If an employee's first day of employment occurs at any time between March 20 and 26, employers will have until Thursday, March 29, to create their E-Verify case.
- The time period during which employees may resolve TNCs will be extended by two federal working days.
- The DHS and the SSA will not be able to assist employees with any case resolution issues from March 23 through 26. Employees will be given two additional federal working days from the date listed on their Referral Date Confirmation to contact the DHS or the SSA.
- Employers may not take adverse action against an employee because the E-Verify case is in an interim case status (such as a TNC, DHS Verification in Process, or a Case in Continuance), including while the employee's case is in an extended interim case status due to E-Verify's unavailability.
- Federal contractors with the Federal Acquisition Regulation E-Verify clause should contact their contracting officer to inquire about extending federal contractor deadlines.
- E-Verify employer agent clients will have an additional two federal working days to electronically sign their Memorandum of Understanding.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The unavailability of E-Verify and the temporary policies implemented to deal with that in no way change the employer requirements regarding the completion of Form I-9 during this period. New hires must complete Section 1 of Form I-9 no earlier than when the employee accepts an offer of employment and no later than the time the employee starts work for pay, rather than by the end of the first day of employment. Employers must complete Section 2 of the I-9 no later than three business days after employment begins and must otherwise comply with all I-9 requirements.