U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Monday announced enhancements to parts of its English and Spanish websites Monday, including E-Verify, the program companies are encouraged to use to determine whether people are authorized to work in the United States.
USCIS, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said the upgrades are an attempt to make it easier for people to access information about E-Verify and other programs on their phone.
The upgrade is the result of feedback from those who visited the site on a smartphone, 30 percent of which are English users and 50 percent are Spanish-language users. Both sites will shrink to fit the size of mobile device screens. USCIS also said a number of immigration-related queries individuals visit the website for have been streamlined for easier use while on-the-go.
“As technology progresses, digital platforms can no longer take a one-size-fits-all approach,” said USCIS Director León Rodríguez. “We listened to our customers. Significant numbers access our site and services through mobile devices. These changes will make a big difference in improving their online experience.”
USCIS has made a number of recent improvements to its E-Verify page. Since Feb. 1, the agency has made its E-Verify Employee Rights video available in 18 new languages, including Arabic, Carolinian, Chamorro, Chinese (traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Marshallese, Palauan, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Punjabi, Tagalog, Urdu and Vietnamese.
The six-minute video explains to viewers their rights and responsibilities when providing documentation that they are legally eligible to work in the United States. It also details how those who are hired by an employer and then fail to have their eligibility status confirmed cannot be discriminated against by employers or fired until the process has been completed.
