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According to DHS, this temporary extension of employment authorization to up to 540 days applies to applicants who submitted Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization renewal applications on or after Oct. 27, 2023, and whose applications are still pending as of April 8, 2024. It also covers eligible applicants who submitted a Form I-765 renewal application on or after April 8, 2024, but no later than Sept 30, 2025. Following this temporary final rule, the automatic extension period for qualifying EADs will revert to up to 180 days for applicants who submit Form I-765 renewal applications after Sept. 30, 2025.

To enable the auto extension feature in Smart Onboarding/Smart I-9 applications, the following two setup options are required:

• Enable EAD Auto Extension Auto Create - Check this checkbox if you wish to schedule a batch process which runs on weekdays (Monday to Friday) in recurrence for auto creating the transactions with EAD expiration date extending to 540 days.
• Summary Digest Notification Pool - Contains a list of contacts for sending email notification when auto creation of EAD extension process is triggered. 
  
  

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For the transaction to be eligible for EAD auto extension, having a value in eligibility Category Code/Class Requested is required and the value must be one of the category codes - A03, A05, A07, A08, A10, A12, A17, A18, C08, C09, C10, C16, C19, C20, C22, C24, C26, C31.  . 

Note: If Section 2 is completed without selecting a value in category code, the transaction will not be not eligible for EAD auto extension.

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For navigating to I-9 Master, click on the I-9 ID link for the corresponding transaction in I-9 Console and select "I-9 Master" option.

How do you complete Section 2 for EAD auto extended transactions?

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To process these transactions,  search by Invitation ID or name in the My Task Console or in the "My Tasks" category of the Keyword Search. Then, select the "Complete I-9" link on the specific row. If the row does not appear in the My Tasks Console, it indicates that the transaction has not been picked up by the batch process.

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In Section 2, the document expiration date is updated by adding 540 days to its previous expiration date. Additionally, an additional note stating "EAD EXT: Extended by 540 days" will be included in the Additional Information field. Review the extended EAD expiration date. In the Additional Information, enter if any note/comment needs to be added. 

If an alternative procedure is used for remote verification of documents, indicate this by selecting the "Check here if you used an alternative procedure authorized by DHS to examine documents" checkbox. 

Note: This alternative process is allowed exclusively when the Legal Entity (Company/Business Unit) responsible for the employee's hiring is registered for E-Verify, which means the Company or Business Unit has been configured in the DHS Client Setup. If the legal Entity (Company/Business Unit) is not enrolled in E-Verify, this checkbox will appear disabled.

When this checkbox is selected, it is required to attach supporting documents. 

If the attachment is not provided, the following error message will be displayed on the page. 

Note: If Section 2 is assigned to a remote user, and if the checkbox indicating "Check here if you used an alternative procedure authorized by DHS to examine documents" is checked by the remote user in Section 2, they are required to upload the supporting documents when completing the activity. In this case, the I-9 Specialist need not add the attachments while completing the Section 2 review. 

Note: Though the checkbox indicating "Check here if you used an alternative procedure authorized by DHS to examine documents" is not selected, you will still be prompted for uploading attachments especially if attachments are configured as mandatory in I-9 activities. If prompted, please upload the required attachments.

After the details are reviewed and updated, select "I Agree" checkbox and electronically sign. 

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Upon completion, the updated document expiration date will be reflected as the I-9 work authorization end date in the additional notes of the completed Section 2 activity as well as in the I-9 Master.