Starting January 1, 2015, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will start purging the E-Verify records of employers that are 10 years old or more. This initiative is in accordance with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) records retention and disposal requirements which mandate that USCIS dispose of E-Verify records after 10 years.

In response to the NARA records retention requirements, USCIS has put in place a process that will allow employers to download a “Historical Records Report” to capture E-Verify records created on or before December 31, 2004. This report will only extract E-Verify data for employers that were using the system during that period of time. The report will be available to affected employers from October 1, 2014 to December 31, 2014 onlyAfter this date, employers will no longer have access to this information.  Guidance for downloading a report is available here.

In response to this USCIS initiative, Employers should deploy an E-Verify record retention policy that addresses the annual purge that USCIS will now conduct of E-Verify records. This policy should include a requirement that all I-9 forms contain an annotation of the relevant E-Verify transaction number.

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Photo of Ian Macdonald Ian Macdonald

Ian R. Macdonald Co-Chairs the firm’s Labor & Employment Practice’s International Employment, Immigration & Workforce Strategies group. He focuses his practice on developing, assessing and managing global mobility programs for multinational companies on a range of challenges affecting the movement of people capital

Ian R. Macdonald Co-Chairs the firm’s Labor & Employment Practice’s International Employment, Immigration & Workforce Strategies group. He focuses his practice on developing, assessing and managing global mobility programs for multinational companies on a range of challenges affecting the movement of people capital domestically and internationally, including secondment agreements, benefits transferability, local host country employment concerns and immigration.

Ian and his team work closely with companies to manage and modify, where needed, corporate immigration programs to maximize efficiency, service and regulatory compliance levels. He is experienced with the full range of business immigration sponsorship categories (visas and permanent residence), anti-discrimination rules to reduce or eliminate risk of employment litigation, employer sanction cases, and I-9 and E-Verify compliance. Ian assists clients with establishing risk-based performance standards (RBPS) and Department of Homeland Security protocol, providing risk assessment assistance to corporations subject to Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) and assisting clients with ITAR/Export Control compliance within the immigration context.

Ian has developed strategic relationships abroad that he utilizes when working with clients to ensure compliance with foreign registration requirements. He is experienced with analyzing complex global mobility opportunities on country-specific matters to facilitate the transfer of personnel. Ian is also experienced in counseling employers on immigration strategy as well as immigration consequences of mergers and acquisitions, reduction in workforces, and furloughs.

Prior to joining the firm, Ian worked for the United Nations, various non-governmental think tanks and corporate law firms in London, Washington, D.C., New York and Atlanta.