How to Verify Employment Eligibility: I-9, E-Verify, and Recordkeeping

To verify employment eligibility, every U.S. employer must complete a Form I-9 for each new hire and, if required by federal contract or state law, run that hire’s information through E-Verify. The I-9 confirms both identity and authorization to work, using documents the employee chooses from federally defined lists. The rule applies to everyone hired after November 6, 1986, U.S. citizens included.¹ The current form edition is dated 01/20/2025 and expires 05/31/2027.²

The Two Steps, and Who Owes Which

The I-9 is universal. E-Verify is not, at least at the federal level. Federal contractors whose contracts contain the FAR E-Verify clause must participate,³ and several states, including Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina, require it for private employers, sometimes above a headcount threshold. If neither applies to you, E-Verify remains optional. The I-9 doesn’t.

Section 1 is filled out by the employee. Section 2 is filled out by you or someone acting on your behalf. Both happen on a short clock.

Section 1: What the Employee Completes

The employee completes Section 1 no later than their first day of work for pay. They can do it any time after accepting the offer, but not later than day one. Section 1 asks for the employee’s full legal name, address, date of birth, and an attestation of status: U.S. citizen, noncitizen national, lawful permanent resident, or a noncitizen authorized to work. They sign and date it themselves.⁴

If a language barrier or disability makes that hard, a preparer or translator can help. Each helper completes a separate certification block on Supplement A with their name, address, signature, and a date that matches the employee’s signature date.⁴

Section 2: What You Complete, and When

You must complete Section 2 within three business days of the employee’s first day of work for pay. If they start Monday, you have until Thursday. For jobs lasting fewer than three days, Section 2 must be finished on day one.⁵

Examine the original documents the employee presents, in person. Record the document title, issuing authority, document number, and expiration date. Enter the employee’s first day of work. Sign and date the certification. Your signature is an attestation under penalty of perjury that the documents reasonably appeared genuine and related to the person who handed them to you.⁵

You can designate an authorized representative to handle Section 2 for you: a personnel officer, notary public, staffing agency, or any other person acting on your behalf. The representative carries the same obligations you do. The employee cannot serve as their own representative.⁵

Which Documents You Can Accept

The employee chooses what to present from three lists. A single List A document proves identity and work authorization together. Otherwise, the employee presents one List B document (identity) plus one List C document (work authorization).⁶

List A includes a U.S. passport or passport card, a Permanent Resident Card (Form I-551), an Employment Authorization Document (Form I-766) with a photograph, a foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp or printed notation on a machine-readable immigrant visa, a foreign passport with Form I-94 for nonimmigrants authorized to work for a specific employer, and a passport from the Federated States of Micronesia or the Republic of the Marshall Islands with Form I-94 under the Compact of Free Association.

List B proves identity only. The most common item is a state driver’s license or ID card with a photograph. Others include a school ID with photo, voter registration card, U.S. military card, Native American tribal document, or Canadian driver’s license. Employees under 18 without any of those can use a school, medical, or daycare record.⁷

List C proves work authorization only. The most common item is an unrestricted Social Security card, meaning one that does not carry a “not valid for employment” notation. A U.S. birth certificate qualifies, as does a State Department certification of birth abroad.⁶

Every document must be unexpired and must reasonably appear genuine on its face. You aren’t expected to be a forensics expert. You are expected to look at the original document and confirm it relates to the person in front of you.⁶

Receipts for Lost or Replaced Documents

If the employee has applied to replace a lost, stolen, or damaged document, you can accept the receipt as a temporary stand-in. The receipt is valid for 90 days from the hire date. By day 90 the employee must produce the actual replacement, or in the alternative present a different combination of acceptable documents. You cannot accept a second receipt to extend the window.⁸

Running E-Verify

E-Verify is a Department of Homeland Security web system that compares the information on the completed I-9 against Social Security Administration and DHS records. You submit the case after the I-9 is done. The system returns a result.

“Employment Authorized” means the records matched and the case is closed. If the employee presented a Permanent Resident Card, Employment Authorization Document, or U.S. passport, E-Verify may trigger a photo-matching step where you compare the photo displayed on screen with the photo on the document itself, not with the employee’s live appearance.⁹

If You Get a Mismatch

A Tentative Nonconfirmation, or mismatch, is not a finding that the employee is unauthorized. Give the employee a copy of the Further Action Notice the system generates and tell them promptly.¹⁰ They then have eight federal government working days to contact SSA or DHS to resolve it.

During those eight days and until the case reaches a final result, you cannot fire, suspend, cut pay, delay training, or take any other adverse action against the employee. This is where employers get into trouble most often. The employee keeps working under the same terms.¹¹

If the employee does not act in time, or if the agencies still cannot confirm eligibility after the employee acts, E-Verify returns a Final Nonconfirmation. You then close the case and may terminate employment without civil or criminal liability.¹²

Examining Documents Remotely

Employers who participate in E-Verify in good standing can examine documents remotely instead of in person. The alternative procedure has three parts: the employee sends copies of the front and back of the documents, you review the same physical documents on a live video call while the employee holds them up, and you retain clear copies for the full retention period.¹³

If you offer remote examination at a hiring site, you offer it consistently. You may limit it to fully remote hires while examining onsite and hybrid workers in person, but you cannot pick and choose based on citizenship or national origin. Check the box in the Additional Information field of Section 2 when you use it.¹³

What You Cannot Do During Verification

The same statute that requires verification also prohibits discrimination based on citizenship status or national origin during hiring and verification.¹ Three practices commonly cross the line:

Asking for more documents than the form requires. If the employee produces a valid List A document, requesting a Social Security card on top of it is a violation.
Telling the employee which document to bring. The employee chooses from the acceptable documents.
Rejecting a document that reasonably appears genuine and relates to the person presenting it.

These are unlawful when motivated by national origin, citizenship, or immigration status.¹⁴ The Department of Justice’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section investigates complaints, and document-abuse penalties are separate from I-9 paperwork penalties.

Reverifying Expiring Authorization

When an employee’s work authorization expires, you must reverify before they keep working. You do this on Supplement B (formerly Section 3). Compare the employment authorization expiration date from Section 1 with the document expiration date from Section 2, and reverify by whichever comes first.¹⁵

You never reverify U.S. citizens, noncitizen nationals, or lawful permanent residents who presented a Permanent Resident Card originally. You never reverify List B identity documents. Reverification is only for work authorization, and the employee presents a new unexpired document from List A or List C.¹⁵

How Long to Keep the Records

Keep each completed I-9 for three years after the date of hire or one year after the employee’s last day of work, whichever is later. For a ten-year employee, that means one year after termination, not three years after hire.¹⁶

Storage can be paper, microfilm, microfiche, or electronic. If DHS, DOJ, or the Department of Labor asks to inspect, you have three business days to produce the forms. Employers using remote examination must also retain copies of the documents examined during the video call for the same period.¹⁶ Destroy records only after the full retention period runs out.

What Non-Compliance Costs

Penalties fall into two tiers. Paperwork violations, meaning failing to complete a form, filling it out incorrectly, or not retaining it, run from $288 to $2,861 per form. Systemic errors across a workforce add up quickly.¹⁷

Knowingly hiring or continuing to employ an unauthorized worker is assessed per worker:

First offense: $716 to $5,724
Second offense: $5,724 to $14,308
Third or subsequent offense: $8,586 to $28,619

These are the inflation-adjusted amounts effective January 2025 and DHS updates them annually, so check the current Federal Register notice.¹⁷ A pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized workers carries criminal exposure: fines up to $3,000 per worker and up to six months of imprisonment.⁶

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Statutes and Regulations
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification
3
E-Verify. Federal Acquisition Rule (FAR)
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Section 1, Employee Information and Attestation
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Section 2, Employer Review and Attestation
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1324a – Unlawful Employment of Aliens
7
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Acceptable Documents for Verifying Employment Authorization and Identity
8
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Acceptable Receipts
9
E-Verify. Photo Matching
10
E-Verify. Sample Further Action Notice – Tentative Nonconfirmation
11
E-Verify. Tentative Nonconfirmations (Mismatches)
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E-Verify. Final Nonconfirmation
13
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Remote Examination of Documents
14
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Types of Employment Discrimination Prohibited Under the INA
15
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Supplement B, Reverification and Rehires
16
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Handbook for Employers M-274 – Retaining Form I-9
17
Federal Register. Civil Monetary Penalty Adjustments for Inflation