Form I-9
All employers who hire any individual for employment in the U.S. must complete an I-9 form. The purpose of the form is to verify identity and employment authorization for all citizens and non-citizens alike. Typically the problem isn’t in not having a form, but in having an incomplete or incorrect form. In conducting audits I have come across I-9 forms completed with the best intentions by hiring managers, business owners, and even HR professionals that have the potential for racking up penalties.
Top I-9 Mistakes:
- Allowing untrained staff to administer I-9 forms
- Accepting unacceptable documents
- Accepting fraudulent documents (fake lawful permanent resident or Social Security cards)
- Using expired forms that list documents no longer acceptable
- Not recording the document title, issuing authority, and expiration date or not recording the information correctly
- Not conducting an I-9 audit/having untrained staff engage in the I-9 audit
- Not checking Section 1 for mistakes made by the new employee
- Making audit corrections without initializing and dating them
- Failure to reverify I-9 forms using work authorization documents that expire
- Not completing the form timely
- Retention errors and purging forms too early
Fines for failing to produce a correctly completed I-9 forms range from $230 to $2,292 per employee. In determining penalty amounts, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considers five factors: the size of the business, good faith effort to comply, seriousness of violation, whether the violation involved unauthorized workers, and history of previous violations.
If you suspect you may have forms that haven’t been completed correctly or that you are potentially missing forms, it’s not too late! Conducting an audit will fill in those gaps and show good faith effort if you are served a Notice of Inspection by ICE. While it’s best to have your ducks in a row before that happens, you do have a 3 day window to provide the forms and an additional 10 day window to correct errors. The single most important step an employer can take to help ensure they protect themselves from potential fines and criminal charges is to identify and resolve errors, omissions and discrepancies on their I-9 Forms.
The Flip Side – I-9 Practices That Can Lead to Discrimination Charges:
- Asking for more than the required documents
- Refusing to accept documents that appear to be genuine
- Specifying which documents a new hire may provide from each list
E-Verify
In the state of North Carolina, all private employers with 25+ employees must be using E-Verify to confirm the work authorization of new hires. The law does not apply to seasonal temporary employees who are employed for 90 or fewer days during a 12-consecutive-month period. Failure to comply with E-Verify can result in civil fines ($10,000+) and notification to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local law enforcement agencies.
How Trailblazer HR Solutions can help
- We can conduct an audit of your I-9 forms and practices
- We can identify errors, omissions, discrepancies, and recommend corrective action or correct the forms on your behalf
- We can train you, your managers, or your HR team how to correctly complete I-9 forms and conduct audits as well as the use of the E-Verify system.
Have peace of mind knowing that you have done everything you can to legally protect your organization in case of an ICE audit.