It has come to our attention that U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services (”USCIS”) has started to take action against employers who fail to timely resolve E-Verify Tentative Nonconfirmation cases (TNC) for their employees within 10 federal government working days. If you are an employer using E-Verify please review the details below to reduce your risk.
The Details
USCIS is sending letters to employers with TNC cases that have remained open for more than 10 days. The letter reminds employers that having TNC cases that remain open and without action for more than 10 days may suggest employer users are either not referring TNC cases to the Social Security Administration or Department of Homeland Security when the employee chooses to take action to resolve the TNC, or are not closing the case when an employee chooses not to take action to resolve the TNC. Importantly, both of these are considered E-Verify policy violations that may lead to USCIS terminating the employer’s E-Verify account. USCIS has followed through on terminating employer accounts when employers fail to resolve TNC cases after receiving the letter from USCIS.
What this Means to You
- If you are an employer using E-Verify it is critical to follow all E-Verify rules.
- USCIS may terminate your employer account if you fail to resolve TNCs within ten working days.
- If your employer account is terminated, you will not be able to process employees through E-Verify.
- Several states mandate the use of E-Verify. Non-compliance could result in penalties up to and including loss of a business license to operate in the state.
- If you are a government contractor required to use E-Verify then deactivation of your E-Verify account would jeopardize your government contract.
Next Steps
If you are using E-Verify you should immediately take action to resolve on any open TNC cases by following these steps:
- Notify your employee of their TNC result as soon as possible within 10 days.
- Give your employee a copy of the Further Action Notice.
- Review the Further Action Notice with your employee in private and have the employee confirm whether the information listed at the top is correct.
- Tell the employee he or she must decide whether to take action on the TNC by the 10th day after TNC is issued.
- If the employee chooses to take action to resolve the TNC, refer the case to SSA or DHS, or both, as described in the Further Action Notice.
- If the employee chooses not to take action to resolve the TNC, close the case and determine if you will continue to employ the individual. If you do continue to employ the individual, you are required to notify DHS of that decision in E-Verify.
- If your employee does not give you their decision by the end of the 10th federal government working day after E-Verify issued the TNC, then you close the case.
· If you have an employee who received a TNC who no longer works for you, you must wait for E-Verify to update the employee’s case so you can close the case in E-Verify.
- Be sure to take action on any subsequent E-Verify results or notifications after processing the TNC. For example, if E-Verify returns a final non-confirmation you should terminate the employee and must close the case.
Finally, if you are using E-Verify, it is important to ensure your contact and account information is correct and up to date in the E-Verify system. E-Verify sends the reminder letters to the registered contact. If it is someone who is no longer with your company or an email box that is no longer monitored, you may not know of the potential for E-Verify account termination and would only find out when you could no longer access the E-Verify system.
If you have any questions please contact your dedicated Service Team for additional support.