American Staffing Association (05/14/12) Ed Lenz

On May 10, ASA filed comments with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services addressing proposed changes to the Form I-9, which employers must use to verify an employee’s identity and to establish that the employee is eligible to work in the U.S. The current iteration of the form is set to expire Aug. 31, and final revisions to the form are expected to be issued this fall. ASA filed comments in response to a public request issued by USCIS in March of this year.

The law requires that the Form I-9 be completed on the “date of hire.” The government considers date of hire to be the date an employee accepts a job offer, irrespective of when the employee starts work for pay. Most staffing firms consider “date of hire” to be the time a job candidate consents to be included in the staffing firm’s roster of temporary employees. The government has long recognized this practice.

The employer section (Section 2) of the current Form I-9 refers to the date “the employee began employment” (i.e., date of hire), but the proposed new form refers instead to “the employee’s first day of work for pay”—which would mean staffing firms would have to wait to complete the employer section of the form until an employee actually starts an assignment.