I-94 GOING TO BE IN ELECTRONIC FORMAT IN THE FUTURE Lal Varghese, Attorney at Law, Dallas The Form I-94 is (Arrival Departure Record) issued by Department of Homeland Security to all nonimmigrant aliens upon arrival in the United States or when changing status in the United States. The Form I-94 is used to document arrival and departure and provides evidence of the terms of admission or parole entering in United States in different visas. The I-94 is not issued to green card holders of U. S citizens upon arrival in United States. It is only issued to nonimmigrant who enters United States from any country in the world. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of DHS, generally issues the Form I-94 to aliens at the time they lawfully enter the United States. Aliens use the Form I-94 for various purposes such as completing employment eligibility verification (the Form I-9), applying for immigration benefits, or to present to a university to verify eligibility for enrollment. Information gathered on the Form I-94 is also used for statistical purposes. The Form I-94 is currently issued in a paper form. For aliens arriving by air or sea, the carrier distributes the Forms I-94 to the aliens required to complete the form while en route to the United States. The alien presents the completed form to the CBP Officer at primary inspection at the port of entry (the first airport the plane lands in United States). The officer stamps the Form I-94 and the alien's passport, detaches the
bottom portion of the form, which is the departure portion, and returns it to the alien along with the alien's passport. The admission stamp contains the port of arrival and date of arrival and is annotated with the class of admission and admitted-to date. The top portion of the form-the arrival portion-is sent to a data entry facility where the information on the form is entered into CBP's computer systems. The departure portion of the Form I-94 retained by the alien may be shown to government or other stakeholders when required. The alien turns in the departure portion of the Form I-94 upon departure, generally to the carrier; the carrier returns the forms to CBP for data entry to make sure that the alien departed United States within the time period authorized by the CBP. With the implementation of the Advance Passenger Information System (APIS1 )