Employers must take steps before Dec. 31 to preserve E-Verify records that are more than 10 years old.

Under a new policy, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced in October that it would delete E-Verify records from the system when the records turn 10 years old. The only way for employers to retain them is to download the Historic Records Report.

Therefore, employers who have been using E-Verify as of Dec. 31, 2004 and wish to retain records from that date and earlier should download the report immediately, as the report will only be available until the end of 2014. On Jan. 1, 2015, 10-year-old records will be deleted and the report can no longer be downloaded. Instructions on how to download the records report are here. Employers who began using E-Verify after Dec. 31, 2004 will not have any records in the report and do not need to do anything.

USCIS adopted the document deletion policy to reduce security risks to individuals’ private information and to comply with National Archives and Records Administration policies.

BAL Analysis: Employers who wish to access old E-Verify records are reminded to act soon.

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