Employer guideRead at source, 9 September 2026

Work Authorization: What an Employer May Accept in 2026

Work authorization is proven with documents, and the employee — not the employer — chooses which ones. Either one document from List A, which establishes identity and employment authorization together, or one from List B plus one from List C, which establish them separately. The rule most employers still have wrong changed on 30 October 2025: DHS ended the automatic extension of Employment Authorization Documents for renewals filed on or after that date. A pending renewal no longer keeps anyone authorized, and USCIS now says the Form I-797C receipt notice is not evidence of employment authorization. When the EAD expires, so does the authorization.

The structure: one from List A, or one from B and one from C

Employment eligibility verification asks two separate questions — who is this person, and are they authorized to work — and the document lists mirror that. A List A document answers both. A List B document answers only the first, so it has to be paired with a List C document, which answers only the second. There is no combination that requires three documents, and there is no combination that lets you pick which one the employee brings.

Two things follow from the shape of that table and neither is optional. You may not tell an employee which document to bring, and you may not ask for a second one once you have a valid combination. The mechanics of filling in the form — deadlines, editions, retention, remote examination and what a fine costs — are a separate subject, and we cover them in Form I-9 requirements.

What changed on 30 October 2025

Until October 2025, an employee with an expiring Employment Authorization Document who filed a renewal on time got an automatic extension — latterly up to 540 days — and could keep working on the expired card plus the receipt notice. That is over. DHS published an interim final rule, effective 30 October 2025, ending automatic extensions for renewal applications filed on or after that date, with comments accepted until 1 December 2025. The rule rewrites 8 CFR 274a.13: the 540-day extension survives only for requests filed before 30 October 2025, and a new paragraph eliminates the extension for everything filed on or after it.

For a facility running two hundred frontline staff, the practical consequence is a calendar problem rather than a legal one. Under the old rule, an EAD expiry was a soft date with a long cushion behind it. Now it is a hard stop: on the day the card expires, an employee whose renewal is still pending has no work authorization to reverify, and continuing to employ them is an unauthorized-employment problem rather than a paperwork one.

What still extends automatically: TPS

The interim final rule left explicit exceptions, and the one most frontline employers will meet is Temporary Protected Status. DHS can still extend a TPS beneficiary's EAD by Federal Register notice or by an individual notice mailed to the beneficiary. Those notices generally cover every associated TPS EAD carrying a specific "Card Expires" date and a category code of A12 or C19, and each notice carries its own Form I-9 instructions.

The mechanics are worth having right, because they are unusual. For a current employee whose EAD is extended this way, you do not complete a new Supplement B in the ordinary sense — you enter EAD EXT and the automatic extension date in the Additional Information field in Section 2. For a new hire presenting one, the document title is "EAD", the number is from the A12 or C19 card, and the expiration date you record is the extension date from the notice, not the date printed on the card. And one prohibition that catches well-meaning HR teams: you may not ask employees to prove they are nationals of a country DHS has designated for TPS.

What never needs reverifying

Reverification is the step that generates most of the unnecessary work, because it gets applied to documents that never call for it. USCIS states the rule plainly: reverification is never required for U.S. citizens or noncitizen nationals, and it is never required when these documents expire — U.S. passports, U.S. passport cards, Permanent Resident Cards, and any List B document.

That last one is the common error. A driver's license is a List B document and it establishes identity only; its expiry has nothing to do with anyone's authorization to work. Chasing an employee for a renewed license so you can "update the I-9" is not compliance. Asking for it as a condition of continued employment moves you toward the discrimination provision below.

Receipts, and the ninety-day window

A receipt is not a document, but it can stand in for one. Under 8 CFR 274a.2(b)(1)(vi), an employee may present a receipt for the application to replace a lost, stolen or damaged document, and must produce the actual document within 90 days of hire — or, in a reverification, within 90 days of the date employment authorization expired. Two other receipts count: the arrival portion of Form I-94 with an unexpired temporary I-551 stamp, and the departure portion of Form I-94 with an unexpired refugee admission stamp.

The exception worth knowing if you hire day labor or event staff: the receipt rule does not apply when the job will last fewer than three business days. There, the actual document is required at the start.

The part that creates liability: asking for the wrong thing

Verification errors cost money. Verification overreach costs more, and it is easier to do accidentally. Under 28 CFR 44.200(a)(3), it is an unfair documentary practice to request more or different documents than are required, or to refuse to honor documents tendered that on their face reasonably appear to be genuine and to relate to the individual, where that is done for the purpose or with the intent of discriminating on national origin or citizenship status. The regulation adds that this holds regardless of whether the practice is a condition of employment or causes economic harm — there is no requirement that the applicant lost anything.

In practice the violations are mundane. Asking a lawful permanent resident for a green card when they offered a driver's license and Social Security card. Asking a naturalized citizen for "immigration papers". Requiring an EAD from anyone who mentions a visa. Asking a TPS employee to prove their nationality. Each of those is asking for more or different documents than the law requires, and each is a decision a hiring manager makes in about four seconds without knowing it is a decision.

Hiring refugees and asylum seekers: which documents work

Refugees and people granted asylum are authorized to work because of their status, and they complete Form I-9 like anyone else, choosing their own documents from the lists. People still waiting on an asylum decision are different: they can work only once they hold an Employment Authorization Document. Under 8 CFR 274a.12, refugees (paragraph (a)(3)) and asylees (paragraph (a)(5)) are in the class “authorized employment incident to status,” while an applicant with a pending asylum application is in paragraph (c)(8), one of the classes that “must apply for work authorization.”

The refugee and asylee rows come from USCIS’s I-9 Central guidance on asylees and refugees, which also states that “a refugee or asylee may choose to present any applicable document from the Lists of Acceptable Documents.” An unrestricted Social Security card with a driver’s license or state ID is also a complete List B plus List C combination.

The October 2025 change hits asylum applicants hardest

Asylum applicants renew their EADs while their cases are pending, and until October 30, 2025 a timely renewal kept them working past the card’s printed date. For renewals filed on or after that date, there is no automatic extension (see the section above). When a C08 card expires, you reverify, and an employee whose renewal is still pending cannot keep working. A Department of Homeland Security proposed rule of February 23, 2026 would also extend the wait before an asylum applicant can apply for an EAD to 365 days. It is a proposal, not the law. Track the expiry dates of every C08 card on the schedule.

Refugees and asylees are protected from citizenship discrimination

Federal law names refugees and asylees as “protected individuals” for citizenship status discrimination, alongside citizens and permanent residents, under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). A job ad or a hiring manager that turns away “refugees” or asks for green cards only is exposed on two fronts: the documentary practice rule above and the discrimination rule itself.

Check a document combination

Pick what the employee actually presented. This applies the lists as USCIS publishes them and flags whether reverification will ever be needed; it is a reading aid, not legal advice, and it does not judge whether a document is genuine.

What this has to do with recruitment advertising

Two things, and both sit before the paperwork. The first is what your job ad says. An advertisement that states a preference for citizens, or asks for a particular immigration document, is doing at the top of the funnel what 28 CFR 44.200 forbids at the bottom of it. "Must be authorized to work in the United States" is a statement of the requirement. "U.S. citizens only" is a statement about people, and unless a law, regulation or government contract actually requires it, it is the kind of sentence that ends up quoted back at you.

The second is volume. Across the 891 Boostpoint-managed Meta campaigns in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, the median campaign cost $13.88 per applicant and the volume-weighted average was $8.02. Cheap applicants are the point — but every applicant who becomes a hire becomes a Form I-9, and now, for anyone on an EAD, a date in a calendar that no longer has 540 days of slack behind it. Employers who hire in the hundreds should be reading the change of 30 October 2025 as a scheduling change first. Our guides to Form I-9 requirements and E-Verify requirements by state cover the two processes this one feeds.

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