Practice Management Alert

Make sure your hiring paperwork is by the book to avoid potential headaches.

Your responsibilities as a hiring manager include filling out the appropriate paperwork for your business, town, state, as well as the federal government. With the current administration’s increasing focus on immigration, the economy, and jobs, it’s especially important to make sure you’re completing mandated processes like employment eligibility verification correctly.

After reading this expert advice on filing out the mandatory I-9 paperwork, do a self-audit to confirm that you and your team members are doing everything by the book.

Know The Nuts and Bolts

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) uses the I-9 form to determine whether employees are legally eligible to work in the United States. Within three days of hiring, employees — both citizens and noncitizens — must attest to their “employment authorization” by completing the I-9 form and presenting supporting documentation of their identity and authorization. Both the hired employee and an employer (or authorized representative of the employer) have to fill out an I-9 form for each respective employee upon hiring. This has been a requirement since 1986.

Even though completing this document has been a requirement for new hires since 1986, you may be surprised by some of the technicalities. For example, the employer is not supposed to specify verbally which documents are acceptable, instead the employer or authorized representative of the employer should direct the new employees to the “List of Acceptable Documents” so the employee can choose which document or documents to use, says Barbara Freet, founder and president/CEO of Human Resource Advisors in Walnut Creek, California.

Curious: The current I-9 form notes that it expired Aug. 31, 2019 but, as of the end of September, the USCIS website says that the current edition is dated July 7, 2017. “We will publish a new edition of this form soon. In the meantime, you may file using the 07/17/17 edition. You can find the edition date at the bottom of the page on the form and instructions,” USCIS says.

Present the Form and List Like This

The best way to make sure you’re including all of the necessary documents is to have a go-to hiring package. Include the I-9 form and List of Acceptable Documents as part of your hiring package, along with the offer letter, Freet suggests. Having a complete picture of the prospective employee’s employability is crucial, and the I-9 form is a critical aspect of that communication process.

The employee should bring their selected documents in on the first day they show up to work and the employer or employer representative should evaluate the documents carefully while the new hire fills out the 1-9 form. The employer or employer representative then has to fill out Section 2 on the form and sign it — the form is not legally completed until or unless it’s signed by the employer, Freet notes.

Important: The current form, that expired Aug. 31, 2019, but is still in use, says that Section 2 of the I-9 form must be completed within three days of the new hire, but the USCIS I-9 Instructions document and website say: “Newly hired employees must complete Section 1 no later than the first day of employment.”

Caveat: If your new hire speaks Spanish, you can print the Spanish version of the form and instructions for reference, but only employees and employers in Puerto Rico can submit the Spanish version as proof of employment eligibility. Employers and employees in the 50 states of the United States and in other U.S. territories must submit the form in English.

If you have staff that work remotely, you cannot complete this process legally without evaluating the documents in person. The USCIS instructions are explicit that the documents must be “physically” examined.

“A number of our clients use notaries in the location where the employee is located to fill out Section 2 of the I-9. The notary does not notarize the document, that person is acting on your behalf not as a notary. But if they see the documents, then they need to fill out Section 2,” Freet says.

Store Employee Forms Like This

Keep a dedicated file for completed I-9 forms separate from individual personnel files. If the employee has a visa with an expiration date, make sure you note the date; 90 days before its expiration, you or someone else will need to inform that employee that a new document will be necessary, Freet says.

You need to keep the I-9 form for each employee on file and ready for inspection.

“Form I-9 must be retained and stored by the employer either for three years after the date of hire or for one year after employment is terminated, whichever is later. The form must be available for inspection by authorized U.S. Government officials from the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Labor, or Department of Justice,” USCIS says.

The USCIS offers a template of the form that one can fill out electronically, which begs the question of whether you as an employer need to keep hard copies of the form or whether you can legally store electronic copies. To do so, the employer must have a way of proving that the people who sign the form electronically are who they say they are.