Today, a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) update for the E-Verify Program was made available by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The PIA update describes the additional information E-Verify will require from new registering employers, which will be sent to Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), a provider of information on businesses and corporations, and be compared against the D&B database to authenticate the employer is in fact a bona fide enterprise.   According to the update, the additional requirements and corroboration by D&B is an effort to reduce the abuse of the E-Verify system by denying access to potentially unqualified or even fictitious  employers.

Specifically, E-Verify will now request the following information for new registrations:

• Doing Business as (DBA) name if applicable;
• The DUNS number, a Dun & Bradstreet Identifier, if available. Not all employers will have a DUNS number, and other information such as address and phone number will be used to differentiate similar employees;
• The Administrator’s Name – Links a company to its corporate administrator. This is the new name of the field formerly known as “Corporate Administrator”;
• Parent Organization (if applicable); and
• Optional: Marketing Channel (where the employer heard about E-Verify).

Depending upon the D&B results, E-Verify will either allow the new employer to register automatically, or attempt to verify the submitted business information by contacting the employer by phone or email. For example, if an individual is hiring a domestic employee and they wanted to use E-Verify, D&B would likely have no information on record for that particular individual employer. In this case D&B will probably return a no match and E-Verify would then contact the individual employer and confirm that they are in fact seeking to verify employment eligibility for an employee.

If E-Verify registration is denied, the employer can always attempt the registration process again in the future, bearing in mind that their information must be verified in order to complete the E-Verify registration process.

Once these new information requirements are in place, E-Verify will display a banner notice on its website. Additionally, when a company decides to register online, a list of required information will be provided so that an employer can determine whether or not it wants to register based on the requirements.

For more details, you can access the entire PIA update in PDF format from the DHS website here.