Late last year the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan ordered Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative unit of ICE, to increase the amount of time spent on I-9 audit compliance worksite enforcement by four to five times.
How can employers assess their potential risk in the face of the expected increase in enforcement?
Every employee hired after November 6, 1986 must complete a Form I-9 at the time of hire. Once the individual’s employment has terminated, the employer must retain the I-9 for a period of time – either three years after the individual’s date of hire, or one year after the date employment is terminated, whichever is later.
Without an electronic I-9 Management system organizations are creating a lot of paper Forms I-9. Paper I-9s can represent significant I-9 audit compliance risk. An estimated 60% – 80% of paper I-9s are either missing, incomplete, or have errors.1 As a result, and illustrated below, employers of all sizes can face significant I-9 audit compliance risk from potential I-9 errors.
How can employers proactively address their potential I-9 audit compliance risk?
Because of this risk, employers should perform an internal self-audit of their I-9s to identify issues in their I-9 records. As outlined by joint guidance from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice employers can make corrections to I-9s to help mitigate risk.
Find out how we can make sense of all that paper! Equifax can streamline the process with our simple electronic conversion tools and award-winning I-9 Audit and Remediation solution. Our technology is designed to help mitigate risk by providing intuitive tools to electronically audit and correct stored Forms I-9. Furthermore, we can quickly get you on the road to compliance and help eliminate issues when creating new I-9s. Streamline and simplify your I-9 compliance with our suite of electronic I-9 solutions.
Finally, register here to see a demo of our I-9 Audit and Remediation solution.
References
1 According to an industry attorney at Jackson Lewis P.C.
The post Assessing I-9 Audit Compliance as Worksite Enforcement Increases appeared first on Insights.