How to Get Your Employer to Enroll in E-Verify for STEM OPT (and Find the Company ID)

Your STEM OPT extension dies without an E-Verify Company ID. Here is the exact information HR needs to enroll, where the number is printed on the MOU, and what to say when they hesitate.

You are about to ask your employer to sign an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security because of you. Or you are staring at an empty box in Section 3 of Form I-983 where an E-Verify Company ID is supposed to go, and the HR contact who was supposed to fill it in has replied, "I don't think we have one."

Either way, your 90-day STEM OPT filing window is running and your DSO is waiting on a completed form.

Start with the thing you can forward to HR without arguing: this is not a preference, it is a regulation. 8 CFR 214.2(f)(10)(ii)(C)(5) requires that "the student's employer is enrolled in E-Verify, as evidenced by either a valid E-Verify Company Identification number or, if the employer is using an employer agent to create its E-Verify cases, a valid E-Verify Client Company Identification number, and the employer remains a participant in good standing with E-Verify, as determined by USCIS." The same paragraph requires the employer to have "an employer identification number (EIN) used for tax purposes."

And enrollment costs the company nothing in fees. E-Verify describes itself as free to use, with no special software required — just a browser.

⚠️ The honest limit, stated up front. If your employer will not enroll, the STEM OPT extension with that employer is not available to you. There is no waiver, no small-business exception, and no workaround. Your DSO cannot recommend the extension without a valid company ID, and nobody at the company can sign around it. Everything below this line is about making yes the easy answer.

What the regulation actually requires

Read the regulatory language again and notice that it creates three separate conditions, not one:

1. Enrolled. The company has an active E-Verify account.
2. Identifiable by number. That enrollment produces a valid E-Verify Company Identification number, or a Client Company Identification number if an employer agent creates the cases.
3. In good standing, as determined by USCIS. This is a live, ongoing condition, not a box checked once.

HR frequently satisfies one and not the others. A company can have enrolled years ago under an administrator who has since left, which leaves the enrollment technically alive and the number unretrievable. A company can be enrolled at the parent level while the subsidiary that will issue your W-2 is not covered.

Separately, USCIS confirms on its STEM OPT page that you must submit the employer's name as listed in E-Verify along with the Company ID or Client Company ID when you apply for the 24-month extension. The number is not just for your DSO's file. It goes on your Form I-765, in Part 2, Item Numbers 28.a through 28.c.

Check before you ask

Before the conversation, use the employer search tool linked from the E-Verify enrollment page to see whether your company is already enrolled. Search with the legal entity name from your offer letter, not the trade name on the website.

Then hold the result loosely, in both directions:

• Not finding your employer's brand name does not prove they are not enrolled. The tool reflects the enrolled legal entity, which may be a parent company, a specific subsidiary, or a named hiring site.
• Finding the parent does not prove the entity that will pay you is covered. This is the single most common false positive in this whole process.

Check, then ask anyway. Our guide to how to check whether a company is actually enrolled covers the wider screening habit, but for this specific question the only definitive answer comes from inside the company's E-Verify account.

The ask: how to raise it with HR

Who you are actually asking

E-Verify enrollment requires two named individuals with contact details: a Signatory, who signs on behalf of the company, and a Program Administrator, who manages the account and cases. E-Verify allows one person to be both.

That tells you exactly who your request has to reach. It is the person who signs employment paperwork — HR leadership, an operations lead, a controller at a small company. It is not your hiring manager, and it is not the recruiter who sourced you. Getting the request to the wrong person is the most common reason it stalls, because a manager who wants to help you has no authority to bind the company to a federal program and will pass it sideways rather than up.

Ask your manager one question: who at the company signs employment paperwork? Then write to that person.

The one-paragraph version of the ask

Keep it to facts, a deliverable, and a date. Something with this substance:

E-Verify is the DHS and SSA system employers use to confirm employment eligibility. Enrollment carries no government fee. I am applying for a 24-month STEM OPT extension, and 8 CFR 214.2(f)(10)(ii)(C)(5) requires my employer to be enrolled in E-Verify, evidenced by a valid Company Identification number. What I need back is that number, for Section 3 of Form I-983, by [date]. I've attached the E-Verify enrollment checklist so you can see exactly what information is required.

Put it in writing. Not because it is more persuasive, but because it gives HR an object they can forward internally without having to reconstruct what you said.

What HR will not say out loud

Here is the part nobody tells students, and the reason "let me look into it" so often becomes silence.

Enrollment is not a one-time favor for one employee. Signing the E-Verify agreement commits the company to permanent obligations. Under the E-Verify memorandum of understanding for employers, the employer agrees to:

• Create an E-Verify case for every new employee within three business days after hire — after both Sections 1 and 2 of Form I-9 are complete — not just for you.
• Use E-Verify for all new employees. The MOU states the employer "will not verify selectively." It cannot run you and skip everyone else.
• Not create a case before hire. Pre-employment screening of applicants through E-Verify is expressly prohibited.
• Display two DHS notices — the Notice of E-Verify Participation and the Notice of Right to Work — in a prominent place visible to prospective and current employees.
• Complete the E-Verify tutorial before any representative creates cases, and take refresher tutorials when prompted.
• Follow the tentative nonconfirmation procedures, which include notifying the employee privately, providing referral instructions, and not taking adverse action while a contested case is pending.

That ongoing obligation, not the paperwork and not a fee, is the real hesitation behind a soft no. Name it in the conversation, because a reader who understands the objection can answer it and a reader who does not will just feel stonewalled.

What is true in response: this is a standard federal program with published rules, a published user manual, and free support. The MOU itself acknowledges that some employers operate in states where E-Verify participation is mandatory. State mandates change often enough that we will not print a list here — if you think your company may already be required to enroll, have HR check their own state's current requirements, because a stale list is worse than no list. Many companies also find the compliance record useful: E-Verify markets the ability to show proof of compliance to state and federal auditors as a benefit.

If the company is genuinely small and this is the first time immigration paperwork has come up at all, our checklist on whether a small company can realistically sponsor you is worth reading now rather than a year from now.

What not to offer

Three things, and they matter:

• Do not offer to pay anything. There is nothing to pay, and offering creates the impression that this is a personal favor being purchased.
• Do not offer to run the cases yourself. E-Verify access is restricted to current employees who need it, and the case-creation role belongs to the company.
• Do not propose being paid through a third party to route around the requirement.

And a hard stop: DHS states that STEM OPT students may not complete Sections 3 through 6 of Form I-983 themselves, and may not act as their own employer signatory, including in entrepreneurial ventures. If anyone at the company suggests you fill in the employer section, stop and talk to your DSO before you do anything else.

The enrollment checklist: exactly what your employer needs on hand

Send them this list. It is published verbatim on the E-Verify enrollment checklist, and handing over the actual requirements converts "let me look into it" into a twenty-minute task.

All companies need:

• Company legal name
• Employer identification number (also called a Federal Tax ID Number)
• Primary physical address from which the company will access E-Verify
• Mailing address, if different from the physical address
• Hiring sites that will participate in E-Verify in each state
• Total number of current employees
• The company's North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code
• Contact information — name, phone number, email addresses — for the company's Signatory and Program Administrator

Federal contractors subject to the FAR E-Verify clause also need: a Unique Entity Identifier (UEI).

Two operational details that trip companies up. First, enrollment must be completed within a single web session — E-Verify says progress cannot be saved, so everything above needs to be gathered before anyone starts. Second, the designated program administrator has to complete the E-Verify tutorial before creating cases, which is a separate step after enrollment.

If they get stuck, E-Verify publishes a support address: [email protected].

Finding the Company ID once they are enrolled

If the company is already enrolled and nobody can find the number, this section is the whole answer. Send it to HR as-is.

On the memorandum of understanding

The E-Verify company ID number is four to seven numerical characters, printed on each page of the memorandum of understanding, directly below the E-Verify logo.

To retrieve the MOU:

1. Turn off the browser's pop-up blocker. (E-Verify flags this specifically — if the MOU does not load, the blocker is usually why.)
2. Log in to E-Verify.
3. From Company Account, select Company Profile.
4. Click View Current MOU at the bottom of the screen.
5. View, print, or save it.

In the E-Verify account

A program administrator who has completed the tutorial can also read the company ID straight from the company profile inside the E-Verify account, without pulling the MOU at all.

If HR says "we don't have one"

That sentence almost always means one of two things, and both are diagnosable in five minutes:

1. Nobody at the company has E-Verify credentials. Either the company never enrolled, or the person who was the program administrator has left and no one replaced them. If it is the second, the enrollment exists and needs a new administrator.
2. They are looking in the wrong system. The company ID is not in the payroll platform, not in the HRIS, and not on the I-9. It is in E-Verify. HR contacts who have never used E-Verify frequently search their payroll vendor's dashboard, find nothing, and conclude the number does not exist.

Give them the retrieval steps above verbatim. In our experience that ends the conversation.

One more thing: the Company ID is not the EIN. They are different numbers, of different lengths, from different sources, and Section 3 of Form I-983 asks for both. Conflating them is a real and frequent error that comes back from the DSO.

The PEO and employer-agent branch

If your company's E-Verify cases are created by an employer agent — a PEO, a staffing partner, an outsourced HR provider — you are not disqualified. Many readers have been told, wrongly, that a PEO ends the conversation.

The regulation expressly accepts a valid Client Company Identification number in this situation. Where it lives:

• Four to seven numerical characters, at the top of each page of the client's memorandum of understanding.
• The agent can also retrieve it by logging in to E-Verify, selecting Manage Clients under Clients, and clicking View next to the client name, at which point the client's company ID displays.

Have your employer request it from the agent in writing, and confirm with your DSO which number belongs on your form.

The honest caveat: co-employment arrangements raise a separate and more consequential question, which is who your STEM OPT employer actually is for I-983 purposes. That is a determination with implications for the whole extension, and it belongs to your DSO, not to a form-filling checklist. If you are placed at a client site through an intermediary, our comparison of working through a staffing agency instead of in-house explains the structure you are inside of, and your DSO decides how it maps onto the form.

Getting the number onto the I-983 correctly

Section 3 of Form I-983 is the employer's section, and per DHS's guidance for employers it asks for the company name, mailing address and website; the EIN and NAICS code; the number of full-time employees hired in the United States; whether the company is a Small Entity; your STEM OPT start date; and the agreed number of training hours per week. The employer signatory attests to the E-Verify enrollment, which means the number and the attestation travel together — you cannot supply the number and have someone else's signature stand behind it.

Then the rule that catches people: the EIN in Section 3, the entity on your W-2, and the entity behind the Company ID must all be the same company. Large groups enroll unevenly. Say it back to HR explicitly, in writing, and get confirmation.

For everything else about the form — the training objectives, the supervision structure, the self-evaluations — our full I-983 training plan walkthrough covers it section by section.

Timing: work backwards from your filing window

The chain is fixed, and the enrollment ask sits at the front of it:

1. The employer enrolls and produces the Company ID. This is the only step entirely outside your control.
2. You and the employer complete and sign Form I-983.
3. You submit the signed I-983 to your DSO.
4. The DSO verifies it and issues a new I-20 with the STEM OPT recommendation.
5. You file Form I-765 with USCIS and the fee.

Two deadlines govern step 5, and both are in 8 CFR 214.2(f)(11)(i)(C): USCIS must receive your Form I-765 up to 90 days before your current OPT employment authorization expires, and within 60 days of the date your DSO enters the STEM OPT recommendation into your SEVIS record. Both have to be true. As of the current Form G-1055 fee schedule (edition 05/29/26), the I-765 filing fee is $520 on paper and $470 online, but check the schedule on the day you file rather than trusting any article's number.

Because the enrollment ask is the earliest item and the slowest, start it first — before the I-983 draft, before you know your exact filing date. If your current EAD is going to expire while the extension is pending, read the STEM OPT EAD automatic extension timing guide now, because a timely and properly filed extension carries an automatic extension of employment authorization for up to 180 days and you should know whether you qualify before the calendar forces the question.

If the answer is no

Say it plainly to yourself: the STEM OPT extension with that employer is not available. Nothing in the conversation changes that.

What is left is practical. You may still be inside your period of post-completion OPT, in which case you can keep working for this employer on your current authorization while you search — but understand exactly how many days you have, because the clock does not care why the extension failed. Our guide to what happens to your OPT clock covers how unemployment days accumulate and why they never reset.

When you restart the search, screen for the right thing. "OPT-friendly" and "E-Verify enrolled" are not the same filter. A company that has hired international students before is more likely to be enrolled, but the only reliable screen is asking, early, in writing: is the entity that would employ me enrolled in E-Verify, and can you give me the Company ID? Ask it in the first or second conversation, not after you accept.

Route the timing consequences to your DSO the same week. Whether to file, when to file, and what happens to your authorization in the interim all depend on your SEVIS record and your current EAD dates. Only your DSO can see those, and only your DSO can act in SEVIS.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Identifying who your employer is in a PEO or client-site arrangement, and deciding what to do when a filing window is closing, are case-specific questions. Your DSO's assessment governs your SEVIS record; take anything beyond that to an immigration attorney.

Frequently asked questions

Does my STEM OPT employer have to be enrolled in E-Verify?

Yes, and it is written into the regulation rather than being a policy preference. 8 CFR 214.2(f)(10)(ii)(C)(5) requires that the student's employer is enrolled in E-Verify, evidenced by either a valid E-Verify Company Identification number or, if the employer uses an employer agent to create its cases, a valid E-Verify Client Company Identification number, and that the employer remains a participant in good standing with E-Verify as determined by USCIS. The same provision requires the employer to have an EIN used for tax purposes. There is no waiver and no small-employer exception.

How much does it cost an employer to enroll in E-Verify?

E-Verify enrollment itself carries no government fee — E-Verify describes the service as free, with no special software required. The real cost to an employer is administrative. A designated program administrator has to complete the E-Verify tutorial, the company signs an agreement with DHS, and every subsequent new hire has to be run through the system within three business days of being hired. When HR raises cost, they usually mean staff time and ongoing obligation rather than a price.

Where is the E-Verify Company ID number printed?

The E-Verify company ID number is four to seven numerical characters and is located on each page of the memorandum of understanding, directly below the E-Verify logo. A program administrator who has completed the tutorial can also find it in the company profile inside the E-Verify account. To pull the MOU itself: turn off the pop-up blocker, log in to E-Verify, go to Company Account, select Company Profile, and click View Current MOU at the bottom of the screen.

My company uses a PEO or an employer agent. Whose E-Verify number goes on the I-983?

If the employer uses an employer agent to create its E-Verify cases, the regulation accepts a valid E-Verify Client Company Identification number. That client company ID is four to seven numerical characters and is printed at the top of each page of the client's memorandum of understanding; the agent can also retrieve it by logging in to E-Verify, selecting Manage Clients under Clients, and clicking View next to the client name. Ask your employer to request it from the agent in writing, and confirm with your DSO which number belongs on your form.

How long does E-Verify enrollment take?

The enrollment questionnaire has to be completed in a single web session — E-Verify states that progress cannot be saved partway — so the practical timeline depends almost entirely on how fast the company gathers the required details and how fast the designated program administrator completes the required tutorial afterwards. E-Verify does not publish a standard number of days. Treat it as a task measured in days, not minutes, and start the conversation well before your DSO needs the completed I-983.

What happens if my employer simply refuses to enroll?

Then that employer cannot be your STEM OPT employer. This is the honest limit of the situation: the E-Verify requirement is a regulatory eligibility condition, your DSO cannot recommend the extension without it, and no amount of goodwill from a manager substitutes for the company ID. Your options are to find a different qualifying employer, or, if you are still within a period of post-completion OPT, to keep working for them on your current authorization while you look — but the STEM OPT extension with that employer is not available.

Does the E-Verify enrollment have to be the same legal entity that employs me?

Yes. The number that belongs on your I-983 is the one tied to the entity that employs you and issues your W-2 — the entity whose EIN goes in Section 3. Large groups sometimes enroll at the parent level and sometimes only at certain subsidiaries or hiring sites, so confirm that the enrolled entity and the employing entity are the same company before you submit anything to your DSO.

Asking a company to join a federal program on your behalf feels like asking for a favor. It is closer to handing them a twenty-minute form and a free account — and the difference is entirely in how you frame it. F1Jobs works with international students through the STEM OPT window, from the E-Verify conversation to the sponsor-track offer on the other side of it.