A continued zealous focus on corporate I-9 compliance by the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offers the most compelling reason to start the year off right with an internal I-9 audit. ICE has indicated that it intends to audit 3,000 employers in this fiscal year. This means that even if your company has not previously been the subject of one of thousands of audits conducted by ICE over the past several years (which have resulted in millions of dollars of fines), it is still a very real possibility that your company will be audited in the coming months and years.

Since the implementation of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), U.S. employers have been tasked with ensuring that they hire and employ only individuals legally authorized to work in the United States. Although the I-9 Form on which the evidence of U.S. employment authorization is recorded has existed, in various iterations, for nearly 25 years, employers continue to struggle with properly and timely completing the form.

In the last few years, the federal government has initiated I-9 audits with increased vigor as a result of both substantially increased funding and public debate about illegal immigration. The audits continue to include companies of all sizes across industries and geographic areas with a continued focus on so-called crucial infrastructure companies (transportation, food, energy, chemical production, among others). These audits should cause companies of all sizes and across the entire United States to review and re-think their I-9 compliance strategies.

Training Essential to I-9 Compliance

One of the most important facets in I-9 compliance is training. Although the I-9 form appears deceptively simple, there are a range of issues that can develop in a company’s completion and maintenance of I-9 forms, including both substantive and procedural or technical violations.

An HR or legal professional tasked with this important compliance responsibility must first and foremost understand how and when to complete an I-9 form. Then he or she must also understand how to track I-9s that require re-verification and ensure that timely updates are made to expiring work authorization. Finally, he or she must ensure that the I-9s are completed only by individuals who are familiar with the company’s I-9s so that the forms are accurately and timely completed.

Companies that believe that its I-9s have been properly and timely completed may be unpleasantly surprised when they conduct an internal audit to find that I-9s may not have been taken or that records of long term employees may have been lost. In our experience, these types of errors far exceed the number of I-9s for employees who are not work authorized or have been completed using improper documentation. However, use of the government’s E-Verify system does not alleviate a company’s requirement to properly complete and maintain the Form I-9.

To learn more about I-9 compliance and recent updates in the area of Social Security No-Match letters and the government’s E-Verify System (electronic employment verification system), join us for a webinar on January 17 to hear from industry expert John Nahajzer. John Nahajzer is a Managing Shareholder at Maggio + Kattar and has assisted employers with both “friendly” or self-initiated I-9 audits as well as ICE (and predecessor Immigration and Naturalization Service) audits.