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F-1 OPT Employers May Need to Register at Employee's Work Location

The May Murthy Bulletin says that an F-1 OPT Employers May Need to Register at Employee's Work Location[i]


“Acting Chief Lotspeich advised that DHS is expected to publish guidance making it clear that the employers registering under eVerify for OPT extensions must register at the student's employment workplace and not at the employer's headquarters location. Though not yet fully resolved, this appears to be the direction the DHS taking.”

However, it is clearly clarified in recent USCIS supplemental questions on OPT[ii]

What if my company is enrolled in E-Verify at some locations, but the hiring site where the student will be employed is not enrolled – is this sufficient?

  • If the hiring site where the student will be employed has not been identified in the MOU that the company signed during enrollment, that hiring site is not considered to be enrolled in E-Verify and therefore cannot employ an F-1 OPT STEM student under a 17-month extension.

  • Employers seeking to employ an F-1 OPT student under a 17-month extension may enroll in E-Verify in one of two ways: register the hiring site individually by signing its own MOU or registering the intended job location as an additional hiring site under the employer’s existing MOU.

USCIS M-655 [iii]

Our company has several hiring sites interested in participating in E-Verify. Each site will be conducting the verification process for its newly hired employees. How should these sites register?

Each site that will perform the employment verification queries must go through the registration process and sign an individual MOU.

I am an employer with multiple hiring sites. Can one site verify everyone? How?

Yes, one site may verify new hires at all sites. When registering, the individual at the site that will be verifying new hires should select “multiple site registration” and give the number of sites per State it will be verifying.

If I sign one MOU, can I use a controlled rollout to implement E-Verify across the organization?

Yes, you can choose which sites to enroll. However, each site that has signed an MOU must verify the status of all new hires for that site. A new MOU is required only for a new site performing verification queries. If a central location, which is already registered, does the verification queries, then the company would only need to amend the number of hiring sites.

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