E-Verify Tentative Nonconfirmation: The Employee's 10-Day and 8-Day Deadlines

A mismatch is not a firing. You have 10 federal working days to tell your employer you are contesting it, 8 more to reach DHS or SSA — and you keep working the whole time.

Someone in HR pulled you aside, handed you a printout headed Further Action Notice, and asked you to sign it. The word on it is "nonconfirmation." You are three days into a job you spent eight months getting, you are on OPT or a fresh H-1B, and the sentence running in your head is the government says I cannot work here.

That is not what it says.

A Tentative Nonconfirmation — DHS now usually calls it a mismatch — means the information your employer typed into E-Verify did not line up with a government record. E-Verify's own page on DHS and SSA mismatches states it directly: "A mismatch does not necessarily mean that the employee is not authorized to work in the United States." And you are not required to stop working. E-Verify's employee rights page lists, as a right, that you may start and continue working during the E-Verify process, including while you are resolving a mismatch.

What you do have is two deadlines, and they are not the same deadline. Nearly every page written about this says "you have 10 days" and stops. There are two clocks, and the second one is the one that ends jobs.

This page walks the whole thing: what to read before you sign, both clocks in calendar terms, which agency you have to reach and how, what your employer may and may not do while you wait, and what happens when the result comes back.

First: read the notice before you sign anything

The top block of the Further Action Notice carries your identifying data exactly as it was entered into E-Verify — last name and first name, the last four digits of your Social Security number, your A-number, your document number, the date of the Tentative Nonconfirmation, the case verification number, and a "Reason for this Notice" field.

Read that block first. Slowly.

"Information was not entered correctly by the employer" is a listed cause of both DHS and SSA mismatches. A transposed digit in your SSN, a date of birth entered US-style when your passport reads day-first, or your given name and surname swapped — those are ordinary, common, and fixable without any referral at all. Check:

• The spelling of both names, and the order. If your legal name is recorded surname-first in your passport and SEVIS, a US HR system will frequently reverse it.
• Every digit of the date of birth.
• The last four of the SSN.
• The A-number and document number against your actual EAD or I-797 approval notice.

If any of it is wrong, tell your employer immediately. The employer instruction on the notice is explicit: if the information at the top is incorrect, the employer is to close the case in E-Verify and create a new case with the correct information — not refer you to DHS. A typo fixed at this stage ends the whole episode in an afternoon.

Your employer also owes you process here. Per E-Verify's employer instructions, they must review the notice with you privately, must read it to you if you cannot read it, must give you a translated version if you do not fully understand English, must have you complete and sign the employee section, and must give you a copy of the signed notice while keeping the original with your Form I-9.

Signing the notice is not an admission

The employee section records exactly one thing: a check-box marked CONTEST (take action to resolve) or NOT CONTEST, plus your signature and the date. That is it. You are not admitting a problem with your status, you are not waiving anything, and you are not agreeing that the mismatch is correct. You are recording a decision so the case can move.

One practical note. E-Verify's employer-side instructions say the employee section is "on page one." On the current DHS Further Action Notice (revision date 07/14/15), page one is employer instructions and your identifying data, and the employee instructions and the contest check-box are on page two, with a "Know Your Rights" summary on page three. Go by what is printed on the copy in your hand, and read all three pages before you sign the one.

The two clocks, in plain calendar terms

Both clocks run in federal government working days. Section 3.3.3 of the E-Verify User Manual defines the term without ambiguity: "Federal government working days are Monday through Friday (except for federal holidays)." Not business days, not calendar days. Weekends do not count, and the eleven federal holidays do not count.

Work an example. Say E-Verify issues the mismatch on Wednesday, September 2, 2026. Day 1 is Thursday the 3rd, day 2 is Friday the 4th — and then Monday, September 7 is Labor Day and does not count at all. Day 3 is Tuesday the 8th. Counting forward, day 10 lands on Thursday, September 17 — more than two full calendar weeks after the notice, because one holiday absorbed a day.

That cuts both ways. It means you have more room than a panicked reading suggests. It also means you cannot back-count on your fingers and trust the answer. Ask your employer for the exact date E-Verify shows for the 10-day deadline, and get it in an email.

The Referral Date Confirmation is a separate piece of paper

When your employer refers your case, E-Verify generates a second document — the Referral Date Confirmation — that the employer must print and hand to you. Its whole job is to carry one thing: the calendar date by which you must contact DHS or SSA. The sample DHS version reads: "Call DHS within 8 Federal Government working days, by ___ (MM/DD/YYYY), to begin to resolve the DHS TNC."

If you have not been given a Referral Date Confirmation, you have not actually been referred. Signing "contest" on the Further Action Notice does not by itself put your case in front of DHS or SSA — your employer has to take an action in E-Verify, and this document is the receipt. If a week has passed since you signed and no confirmation has appeared, ask, in writing, whether the case was referred.

DHS mismatch or SSA mismatch: which one you have

The Further Action Notice names the agency at the top. The two are resolved in completely different ways, so this is the first thing to identify.

DHS mismatch

E-Verify lists these causes for a DHS mismatch — the employee's:

• Name, A-number, I-94 number and/or foreign passport number were recorded incorrectly in DHS records
• U.S. passport, passport card, driver's license or state ID card information could not be verified
• Information was not updated in the employee's DHS records
• Citizenship or immigration status changed
• Record contains another type of error
• Information was not entered correctly by the employer

Look at that list through the lens of the last six months of your own life. "Information was not updated" and "citizenship or immigration status changed" are the two that catch this audience constantly. You just changed status from F-1 to H-1B on October 1. Your Form I-766 EAD was produced three weeks ago. Your I-94 was renumbered when your extension was approved. Your STEM OPT extension posted to SEVIS but not everywhere else. Any of these can produce a mismatch on a person whose authorization is entirely valid.

If the underlying problem is an I-94 that is genuinely wrong rather than merely new, our guide to fixing an error on your I-94 covers the correction path. If your EAD is late and your employer created the case against a document you do not physically have yet, read the delayed EAD action plan alongside this one.

There is one instruction on the DHS notice that is written for you specifically and appears nowhere else in the E-Verify literature. Page two of the DHS Further Action Notice says, under the heading Foreign Students and Exchange Visitors Only:

"DHS cannot resolve this case if your Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) record is incorrect. Before you call DHS, try to contact your Designated School Official or Responsible Officer and ensure your SEVIS record is correct."

If you are on OPT or STEM OPT, email your DSO the day you receive the notice. Not after you call DHS. Before. A DHS representative cannot fix a SEVIS record, and burning three of your eight days on a call that cannot succeed is the most avoidable failure in this whole process.

(If you are on STEM OPT and wondering why you are in E-Verify at all: the extension requires an E-Verify-enrolled employer, which is why your I-983 training plan and your employer's E-Verify enrollment travel together. Enrollment is at the entity level, which is worth knowing when you are screening employers before you apply.)

SSA mismatch

E-Verify lists these causes for an SSA mismatch — the employee's:

• Citizenship or immigration status was not updated with SSA
• Name change was not reported to SSA
• Name, Social Security number or date of birth is incorrect in SSA records
• SSA record contains another type of mismatch
• Information was not entered correctly by the employer

The first two are the trap for international workers. You were issued an SSN years ago as an F-1 student, probably on the strength of an on-campus job, and SSA has been holding that record ever since with your status as it was then. You have since moved to OPT, then STEM OPT, then H-1B. Unless you went back and told SSA, that record did not follow you.

E-Verify puts the responsibility on you in terms: "If you recently changed your name, citizenship or immigration status, notify SSA. This will decrease your chance of getting an SSA mismatch by ensuring your SSA records are correct." The same applies to a marriage name change, and to the very common case where SSA holds your name in a different order or without a middle name that your passport includes. Our guide to getting an SSN and driver's license as an international student covers what SSA holds and how it is updated.

Dual mismatch and photo mismatch

A dual mismatch means both DHS and SSA flagged the case. Both have to be addressed — resolving one does not resolve the other.

A photo mismatch is a subtype of DHS mismatch: your employer indicated that the photo E-Verify displayed did not match the photo on the document you presented. It follows the same referral process, with one addition on the employer's side — they must also send DHS a copy of the document, either uploaded in E-Verify or shipped by express carrier at their expense. Regular mail is expressly not permitted. This is the employer's step, not yours, but it is worth confirming they have done it.

How to take action on a DHS mismatch

You have two paths, and they are not alternatives so much as a preferred route and a fallback.

Option 1 — myE-Verify, then call. Create or sign in to a myE-Verify account, submit the documents showing your employment authorization to DHS electronically, then call DHS at 888-897-7781 (TTY 877-875-6028).

Option 2 — call directly. If you cannot create a myE-Verify account, call the same number and speak to a representative who will work through the details of your case with you.

Before you dial, have this in front of you:

• The Further Action Notice — all pages. DHS will ask for the case verification number printed on page one.
• The Referral Date Confirmation.
• Your EAD (Form I-766) or your I-797 approval notice, whichever your authorization rests on.
• Your most recent I-94.
• Your passport, and your visa if you have one.
• Your I-20 with the OPT or STEM OPT recommendation, if you are a student.

If you need help in a language other than English, you can ask the E-Verify customer representative for an interpreter — that is printed on the notice.

One small thing that has confused people: the DHS Further Action Notice PDF has a typo in the TTY number on page two, printing 887-875-6028. Every other E-Verify source, including page three of the same notice, gives 877-875-6028. Use 877.

How to take action on an SSA mismatch

There is no phone-only path. You have to appear at an SSA field office in person, with the Further Action Notice in hand, within your 8 federal working days.

And here is where the real-world friction sits. Since January 6, 2025, SSA has required customers to schedule an appointment for service in its field offices. In the announcement of that change, SSA also said it will not turn away people who are unable or unwilling to make an appointment, that members of vulnerable populations and people in situations requiring immediate or specialized attention may still walk in, and that some offices with minimal wait times will still serve walk-ins.

Your 8-day clock does not extend because the appointment calendar is full. So:

1. Call for an appointment the same day you get the Referral Date Confirmation. Use the field office locator for your local number, or the national line at 1-800-772-1213.
2. If the first available appointment is after your deadline, say so on the call. Ask whether you can be seen as a walk-in for an E-Verify mismatch, and note the name of whoever you spoke to.
3. If you still cannot get in before the deadline, do not go quiet. Tell your employer in writing what you have attempted and on what dates, and call the E-Verify Employee Hotline at 1-888-897-7781 to report that the deadline is at risk. A documented, communicated attempt is a materially different position than a missed date with no record.

The failure mode to avoid is silence. Missing the date with nothing written down is how a fixable mismatch becomes a Final Nonconfirmation.

What your employer may and may not do while your case is pending

These are rules, not courtesies. From E-Verify's employee rights page, an employer that participates in E-Verify must not:

• Terminate you or take any other adverse action — denying work, delaying training, withholding pay, or otherwise assuming you are not authorized to work — because of your decision to take action to resolve a mismatch, or because your case is still pending with DHS or SSA
• Create a case for you in E-Verify before you accepted an offer of employment and completed Form I-9
• Use E-Verify to discriminate against you on the basis of citizenship, immigration status, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability
• Tell you which Form I-9 documents to present
• Use E-Verify to verify you if you are not a new hire (with a narrow federal-contractor exception)
• Use E-Verify to reverify an existing employee whose temporary employment authorization has expired — that is a Form I-9 Supplement B step, not an E-Verify step

They must:

• Display the E-Verify Notice of Participation and the Department of Justice Right to Work posters
• Give you the Further Action Notice, privately, translated if needed
• Give you the Referral Date Confirmation if you decide to contest

The E-Verify page on mismatches puts the operative sentence plainly: "The employee must be allowed to continue working while he or she resolves the mismatch." The same protection covers a case sitting in Case in Continuance — while a case is in continuance, the employer cannot terminate, suspend, delay training, withhold or lower pay, or take any other adverse action.

⚠️ The protection is real, and it is bounded. It covers you while your case is pending after you elect to contest. It does not cover you if you tell your employer you will not contest, and it does not cover you if you go silent past the 10th federal government working day. In both of those cases E-Verify issues a Final Nonconfirmation and your employer may lawfully terminate you. If you are unsure whether to contest, contest — and then get advice. Deciding "not to contest" to buy time is the one move on this page that cannot be undone.

The result comes back: Employment Authorized, Continuance, or Final Nonconfirmation

Your employer, not you, receives the final case result, and must inform you of it. You can track your own case at myE-Verify, but the notification duty runs through the employer.

Three outcomes matter.

Employment Authorized. The record was corrected or reconciled, E-Verify confirms your authorization, the case closes, and nothing further is required of you. Note that it may take up to two federal government working days after the mismatch is resolved for the updated status to appear on your employer's side, so a short lag after a successful DHS call or SSA visit is normal.

Case in Continuance. DHS or SSA needs more than the standard window — commonly because a document was lost and a replacement was applied for. No new action is required from you, you keep working, and the adverse-action prohibition still applies. Your employer should be checking E-Verify for updates.

Final Nonconfirmation. Per section 3.6 of the E-Verify User Manual, a case reaches this result when E-Verify cannot confirm your employment eligibility after you contacted DHS or visited SSA, or because you failed to contact DHS or visit SSA within the 8 federal government working days, or because you did not give your employer a decision by the end of the 10th federal government working day. The manual then states the consequence without softening it: the employer must close the case, and "may terminate employment based on a case result of Final Nonconfirmation with no civil or criminal liability as noted in 'Responsibilities of the Employer,' Article II, Section A, paragraph 13 of the MOU."

If that is where you land, there is still a step. You or your employer can request additional review by calling E-Verify at 1-888-464-4218. In a further review, E-Verify may revisit the case result and issue a Status Update Letter to the employer and to you. It is not an appeal in any formal sense, and it is not a substitute for having met the deadlines, but it exists and it is free.

After it is resolved: fix the record so it does not happen at your next job

This is the section people skip, and it is the one that pays off. An uncorrected record fires the same mismatch again — at your next employer, when your STEM OPT job changes, when your H-1B transfers. You will be sitting in the same room having the same conversation in eighteen months.

E-Verify's page on correcting your immigration record lays out the routes:

• A wrong Form I-766 EAD or Form I-551 green card: contact USCIS through the USCIS Contact Center.
• A wrong USCIS record generally, where you know what is wrong: submit a Privacy Act amendment request in writing to Privacy Act Amendment, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, National Records Center, FOIA/PA Office, P.O. Box 648010, Lee's Summit, MO 64064-8010, or through the online FOIA request service. Mark the envelope "Privacy Act Request."
• You do not know what is wrong: file Form G-639, Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Request to obtain copies of your records first. G-639 is not mandatory — a letter containing the same information works.
• A wrong I-94: if it was issued by USCIS, contact the USCIS Contact Center. If the error happened when you entered the United States, it is a CBP problem — use a CBP deferred inspection site or port of entry.
• A wrong SEVIS record: you are a student or exchange visitor, so this goes through SEVP and, in practice, through your DSO.

Do this in the calm weeks after the case closes, not during them.

The status question underneath all of this

If the mismatch resolves, none of this touches your immigration record. A mismatch is a database discrepancy, not a violation, and there is nothing about it to disclose on a future form.

If it ends in termination, the consequence depends entirely on your category, and it is not the same consequence:

• On post-completion OPT or STEM OPT, the days start counting against your cumulative unemployment limit. Our guide to the OPT unemployment clock and how to survive it covers how the count actually works.
• On H-1B, the 60-day grace period after an H-1B job ends is the mechanism, and it is shorter than most people assume.

No article can compute your days for you, and this one is not going to try. If you are on F-1 OPT or STEM OPT, your DSO does that arithmetic. If you are on H-1B, or if there is any gap anywhere in your history, that is an immigration attorney's question.

If the process itself went wrong

Your employer suspended you the day the notice came. They cut your hours. They told you not to come in until it clears. They never gave you a Referral Date Confirmation. They asked you to bring a specific document. Those are not gray areas.

• E-Verify Employee Hotline — employer misuse, privacy violations, general E-Verify complaints: 1-888-897-7781, TTY 1-877-875-6028, international 1-571-293-7538, [email protected]. Open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern; the TTY line runs 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern.
• Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER), Department of Justice Civil Rights Division — discrimination based on citizenship, immigration status or national origin, unfair documentation practices, and retaliation: 1-800-255-7688, TTY 1-800-237-2515, [email protected]. Open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern.

IER calls can be anonymous, and language services are available. E-Verify's own page on reporting violations says the quiet part out loud: "You may be able to receive pay for work you lost and even get your job back." Back pay and reinstatement are real remedies.

Whether a specific action by your employer was unlawful is a legal determination, and this page is not going to make it for you. Call the hotline and describe what happened.

Frequently asked questions

Can my employer fire me because E-Verify returned a Tentative Nonconfirmation?

Not while your case is pending. E-Verify's employee rights page says an employer that participates in E-Verify must not terminate or take any other adverse action against you — denying work, delaying training, withholding pay, or otherwise assuming you are not authorized to work — because of your decision to take action to resolve a mismatch or because your case is still pending with DHS or SSA. You have the right to start and continue working during the E-Verify process. What your employer may lawfully do is terminate you if you tell them you will not contest the mismatch, or if you never give them an answer by the 10th federal government working day.

How many days do I actually have after a Tentative Nonconfirmation?

Two separate clocks. First, you must tell your employer whether you will take action to resolve the mismatch within 10 federal government working days after E-Verify issued the mismatch result. Second, once your employer refers the case, you have 8 federal government working days to call DHS or visit an SSA field office. Your Referral Date Confirmation states the exact calendar date for the second clock. Federal government working days are Monday through Friday excluding federal holidays, so a 10-day clock is roughly two calendar weeks and a holiday pushes it further.

What is the Further Action Notice and what do I do with it?

The Further Action Notice is the document your employer must print and review with you privately. It tells you whether the mismatch came from DHS or SSA, why it was issued, what your options are, and what documents you need. Read the identifying information at the top first and tell your employer immediately if your name, date of birth or Social Security number was typed in wrong — an employer entry error is one of the listed causes, and the fix is for the employer to close the case and create a new one with correct data, not a referral. You then check the contest or not-contest box, sign and date it, and return it, keeping your own copy.

How do I resolve a DHS mismatch versus an SSA mismatch?

For a DHS mismatch you contact DHS — you can create or sign in to a myE-Verify account to submit your employment-authorization documents electronically, then call DHS at 888-897-7781 (TTY 877-875-6028), or call that number directly if you cannot create an account. For an SSA mismatch you must visit an SSA field office in person and bring the Further Action Notice with you. For an SSA citizenship mismatch you may either call DHS or visit SSA. A dual mismatch means both agencies flagged the case and you must address both.

Why would a brand-new EAD or a recent status change trigger a mismatch?

Because the record E-Verify checks may not have caught up. E-Verify lists "information was not updated in the employee's DHS records" and "citizenship or immigration status changed" among the causes of a DHS mismatch, alongside a name, A-number, I-94 number or foreign passport number recorded incorrectly. A recent change of status, a newly issued Form I-766 EAD, or a name recorded in a different order than SEVIS or SSA holds it are all ordinary explanations. E-Verify states plainly that a mismatch does not necessarily mean the employee is not authorized to work in the United States.

What happens if I get a Final Nonconfirmation?

A Final Nonconfirmation means E-Verify could not confirm your work authorization. Per section 3.6 of the E-Verify User Manual, the employer must close the case and may terminate employment based on that result with no civil or criminal liability, under Article II, Section A, paragraph 13 of the E-Verify MOU. You or your employer can request additional review by calling E-Verify at 1-888-464-4218; in a further review E-Verify may revisit the result and issue a Status Update Letter. Separately, if the mismatch was caused by a bad record rather than a real authorization problem, correct the underlying record with USCIS, CBP or SEVP so it does not recur at your next job.

Who do I call if my employer breaks these rules?

The E-Verify Employee Hotline is 1-888-897-7781 (TTY 1-877-875-6028, international 1-571-293-7538), open Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern, for employer misuse, privacy violations and general E-Verify complaints. For discrimination based on citizenship, immigration status or national origin, unfair documentation practices, or retaliation, contact the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division's Immigrant and Employee Rights Section at 1-800-255-7688 (TTY 1-800-237-2515), Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern. IER calls can be anonymous and language services are available.

A mismatch is a records problem until you let a deadline turn it into an employment problem. Read the notice, contest it, email your DSO the same day, and put the two dates in your calendar before you leave the building. F1Jobs works with international students and workers through the paperwork that sits between an offer and a first paycheck. This article is general information, not legal advice — do not let a deadline lapse while you wait for an answer from a website.