United States Citizen and Immigration Service (USCIS) is very busy improving general E-Verify Outreach and Customer Service for employees and employees dealing with the intricacies of the Form I-9 process. We applaud them for their continued efforts on I-9 Central and for today's release detailing the 345,000+ employers enrolled in the E-Verify program, a web-based system that compares information from an employee's Form I-9 to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility. The lists of enrolled employers, including federal contractors, are now conveniently available on the E-Verify website.

"The E-Verify Employers and Federal Contractors Lists provide the business name, city, state and ZIP code used during registration with E-Verify. They also indicate which businesses are federal contractors and provide other information such as workforce size. Click here to see these lists" stated the USCIS web release.

We were very pleased to see that the USCIS offered caveats to be considering when searching these lists. Such caveats are critical when searching the lists for particular employers. Specifically, we do not recommend using the list to confirm or deny E-Verify participation of a particular employer. 

Caveats for reviewing the E-Verify Employers and Federal Contractors Lists:

• The lists only includes employers and federal contractors who have self-reported that their company has five or more employees.
• Not all business locations of an employer enrolled in E-Verify may be found on the lists. The absence of a business location does not mean or imply that the business operating at the unlisted location either is or is not enrolled in E-Verify.
• Naming conventions used by employers may not be recognizable to the public. When an employer enrolls in E-Verify, the employer uses the legal name of the individual or business entity. In many cases, however, an employer may use a trade name for public business purposes.
• E-Verify does not collect contract information.
• The E-Verify Employers and Federal Contractors Lists will be updated on a quarterly basis and the current postings are include employers and federal contractors enrolled in E-Verify through March 15, 2012.

More on I-9 updates including a an analysis of the proposed new Form I-9 and ICE's recent worksite activity will be posted shortly.