U.S. DHS M-274 Handbook NAPEO Update

Compass Readers,Quickly after Michael Miller's memo went out yesterday about the M-274 handbook, Farrah Fielder (General Counsel, NAPEO) sent out an email with NAPEO's updates and plan for tackling this head on.Farrah expressed the following points on the M-274 change and NAPEO's federal governmental affairs plan:

• NAPEO has been aware of this change since February, when several NAPEO members mentioned to NAPEO that the PEO content had been removed from the M-274 handbook.
• Contact with ICE by NAPEO member companies at that time yielded no information on the changes.
• There was no political leadership at ICE when these changes occurred.
• NAPEO has seen no changes in enforcement from ICE towards the PEO industry since the Trump Administration took office.
• No NAPEO member, to our knowledge, has changed its policies on the I-9 form based on the removal of the PEO content from the M-274 handbook.
• And, as far as we are aware, ICE has not rejected/refused/prohibited PEOs from filing I-9s on behalf of clients or filing client I-9s as agents since the changes to the M-274 handbook.

Farrah continued, "NAPEO, as part of its federal legislative and regulatory agenda, has immigration reform as an agenda item."The following is the associations plan of action:

• Ask the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to clarify the responsibilities of a PEO under E-Verify, addressing the following issues:
  • PEO and client compliance responsibilities under E-Verify
  • Compliance with E-Verify for individuals and clients that are already in a PEO relationship
  • Creating an E-Verify compliance safe harbor for PEOs
• NAPEO also plans to form a working group to implement these items once there is political leadership at ICE.

To understand more on this topic, please refer to this previous article that was published yesterday: https://peocompass.com/u-s-department-homeland-security-m-274-handbook/If you have any questions feel free to contact Farrah Fielder (ffielder@napeo.org) or Thom Stohler (tstohler@napeo.org - VP, Federal Government Affairs NAPEO) directly.We will continue to update as more information comes in.Regards,Brian UrsoRisk Consultantburso@libertateins.comLinkedIn

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