Don’t miss this deadline. May 7, 2013 marks that last date on which
Employers may use the one page I-9 form OMB 1615-0047 bearing the expiration
date of 8/31/12. A new form has now
been released and although it bears an effective date of May 8, 2013, Employers
are being advised to utilize the form immediately and toss aside any and all
non-compliant forms. The new form has
been expanded to two pages and provides six pages of instructions. There do not appear to be many changes to
the form. Space for email address and
phone number have been added and the guidance provided for aliens authorized to
work is much more user friendly, identifying exact documents and required information. The Employer now completes page 2 which is
virtually the same information with additional space for input.
The
new form release follows the efforts of the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement office (ICE) to crack down on non-compliant Employers. Reports indicate that during 2012, the ICE
audited over 3,000 businesses, 12 times more than the number audited in
2007. These audits have resulted in more
than $13 million in fines. Texas and New
Jersey were among the states most audited.
Fines vary based on severity or type of violation. For hiring or continuing to employ a person
knowing that the person is not authorized to work in the United States, fines
range from $375 per occurrence for first offense to $16,000 for third
offenses. Failure to comply with the
requirements of the I-9 form carries its own penalty of $110 to $1,100 for each
inaccurate form.
Strict
rules govern documents which are acceptable in order to prove employment
authorization. List A, List B and List
C have not changed but recall that in order to prove employability a potential
worker must present either one item from List A OR an item from both List B and
C. This means that a US Passport trumps
all. No other documents are
necessary. However, a driver’s license
does not have the same power. A
driver’s license must be accompanied by another document, one from List C,
which may be a social security card or a birth certificate.
As
a reminder, you should make sure that all new hires complete a form I-9, only
ask an applicant to complete the form after you make an employment offer,
maintain forms for three years after the date of hire or one year after the
termination, whichever is later, make certain to follow up on expiring
documents, maintain I-9’s in a file other than the employee personnel file, and
strictly abide by the required documents list provided by the ICE. Yes, I said follow up on expired
documents. You can be fined for
continuing to hire a person who is ineligible for employment.
Don’t wait for the
ICE to knock at your door. Take
compliance with this directive seriously.
Implement a self-audit protocol and make adjustments to your process
based upon your findings. Incorporate
this protocol into the overall compliance program of the facility. Then you will be ready when the ICE serves
you a Notice of Intent to audit (NOI).
