Has been around for years and years. Apparently it isn’t doing the job it was designed to do (verify employment eligability)… yet there doesn’t seem to be alot of call to simply fix it.
What am I missing?
Employees often pay people under the table. In that case, an I-9 isn’t filled out.
The main weakness of the process driven by the I-9 form is that it didn’t take into account the relative ease of forging documents. Forgery has no doubt gotten easier as computers became more common and advanced, plus the market for forged documents has gotten stronger. The process requires the employer to verify the documents, but doesn’t put much if any burden on the employer to verify that the documents are genuine.
Putting that burden on employers would be a significant burden, since a wide variety of documents are acceptable, such as driver’s licenses from every state, just for starters. Businesses really don’t want that burden, which would put the liability on them every time an HR clerk failed to discern a professional-quality forgery.
Also, DMVs and other government agencies almost certainly aren’t ready to play a meaningful role in helping businesses verify the documents every time anyone gets hired. Verifying only suspicious *documents * might be an option, although still a burden on them. On the other hand, verifying only documents of suspicious *people * is likely to be found illegally discriminatory. Employment discrimination based on national origin is illegal based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
On the other hand, there’s not much momentum to eliminate the form entirely, since it is a common sense measure to at least ask everyone if they are legally entitled to work.
Efforts to cut down on hiring of illegal immigrants have focused on the Social Security Number verification process. There has been a fair amount of momentum and increased activity around this process.
I also think that because the I-9 is an official govt form (unlike a job application) if someone fills it out and then is found to be an illegal it creates an ironclad way of not only legally firing them but prosecuting them as well.
The trouble is not with the I-9. The trouble is with lax enforcement of the rules requiring the I-9. Unless and until the government gets serious about prosecuting each and every employer who hires improperly documented workers, the I-9 will simply be something good employers try hard to comply with and bad employers simply pay lip service to.
Wow, my first post in GQ. I feel like I’m growing up!
I work for an employment agency. I am required to have everyone fill out an I-9 and I must also fill out a portion of the I-9 verifying that the employee has brought in sufficient IDs.
In addition to the filled out I-9, the Department of Homeland Security has implemented a program that allows employers like us to check employment eligibility. We use a program called the E-Verify from the DHS website where we input the information from the IDs given, and based off of that information, it generally lets us know instantly whether or not the person is eligible for employment.
It’s quite a handy program. There have been a few times when employment eligibility has been inconclusive, but the program lets you know what the problem is (social security number doesn’t match the name, unable to determine U.S. citizenship,etc.), and it also produces a link of all the paperwork the applicant has to bring in to which government institution to clear things up.
Most of the people are relieved to hear that we want to help them clear up the inconclusive results. They normally come back after they visit their government institution with their proper IDs and that institition clears up whatever typographical/computer error they have on their part. Some freak out, but hey, bad for them. In the future all employers will be required to use the E-Verify on their employees and they’ll just run into problems later on.
At this point, once the applicant comes back, I run the program again and yay, their misinformation has been cleared up and they are eligible for employment! But don’t worry, not every Tom, Dick or Harry can run this program on whomever they please. Your supervisor has to apply on your behalf to the DHS to be sent the link to the program, and instructions in order to be certified to utilize the program. Once you are sent the link and instructions of how to establish your profile on E-Verify, you go through online tutorials on when and when not to use the program, how to use it, etc. Then you take a test on the things you learned from the tutorials and if you pass, you are then certified by DHS to process people’s information.
I feel like I finally contributed to the Dope. 