I-9 Citizenship and Immigration Status: The Four Boxes

Form I-9 asks every new hire in the United States to declare a citizenship or immigration status by checking one of four boxes in Section 1: U.S. citizen, noncitizen national of the United States, lawful permanent resident, or noncitizen authorized to work. These are the I-9 citizenship and immigration status categories, and the box you check controls what else you must write in Section 1, which identifying numbers you provide, and whether your employer will ever have to reverify your work authorization.¹ You sign the attestation under penalty of perjury, so picking the right category matters.

Section 1 is the employee’s portion of the form. You complete and sign it no later than your first day of work for pay, though you can fill it out any time after you accept the job offer.¹ Only one box gets checked. Here is what each one means and what it triggers.

Box 1: A Citizen of the United States

U.S. citizens check the first box. This covers anyone born in one of the 50 states, born in a U.S. territory such as Puerto Rico or Guam, or naturalized as a citizen.

If you check this box, you do not enter an expiration date or an alien registration number in Section 1. Your right to work does not expire, so your employer will never need to reverify you. You still have to present documents in Section 2 to prove identity and work authorization, just like every other new hire, but the choice of which documents to show is yours.²

Box 2: A Noncitizen National of the United States

This is a narrow category, and most people who wonder whether it applies to them are actually in one of the other three. Noncitizen nationals owe permanent allegiance to the United States but are not citizens. The group is limited to people born in American Samoa, certain former citizens of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and certain children of noncitizen nationals born abroad.³

Section 1 works the same way it does for citizens: no expiration date, no A-Number, no reverification down the road. Your status does not expire.

Box 3: A Lawful Permanent Resident

Green Card holders check the third box. When you do, Section 1 requires you to enter either your Alien Registration Number (the “A-Number”) or your USCIS Number. Those are the same number: the USCIS Number is just the A-Number with the letter “A” dropped from the front.³

An important point that trips up both employees and employers: permanent resident status itself does not expire, even though the plastic Green Card has a printed expiration date. Once you have checked the lawful permanent resident box and shown a valid document at hire, your employer should not reverify you when your Green Card expires, and should not ask you to present a renewed card.⁴

There is one exception. If you were still waiting for your actual Green Card at the time of hire and presented temporary evidence instead—a temporary Form I-551 stamp on your I-94 or foreign passport—your employer must reverify when that temporary evidence expires.⁴

A note on the wrong box: refugees and asylees are sometimes told or assumed to be permanent residents because they have been in the country for years. They are not, for I-9 purposes. Refugees and asylees check box 4.

Box 4: A Noncitizen Authorized to Work

The fourth box is the catch-all for everyone else who is legally permitted to work in the United States but is not a citizen, noncitizen national, or lawful permanent resident. It covers holders of Employment Authorization Documents (EADs), refugees, asylees, and workers in various visa categories.

If you check this box, Section 1 asks for two things: an expiration date for your work authorization, and at least one identifying number. For the number, you pick one of the following:³

Your Alien Registration Number or USCIS Number
Your Form I-94 Admission Number
Your foreign passport number and the country of issuance

The expiration date you enter is what will trigger your employer’s reverification obligation later. If your work authorization does not carry an expiration date, as is the case for refugees and asylees, write “N/A” in the expiration date field.³

The 2025 Change to EAD Auto-Extensions

If you check box 4 because you hold an EAD, one recent change is worth knowing. Until late 2025, filing a timely EAD renewal application gave you an automatic extension of your expiring card for up to 540 days while USCIS processed the renewal. On October 30, 2025, DHS published an interim final rule ending automatic EAD extensions for renewal applications filed on or after that date. The one exception is EADs tied to Temporary Protected Status, which may still be automatically extended for up to one year or the duration of the TPS designation, whichever is shorter.⁵

The practical effect: the expiration date you write in Section 1 is now much more likely to be the real cutoff. A pending renewal no longer buys extra time on the job, so start the renewal process well before your card expires.

Picking the Right Box When You Are Unsure

The four categories are exclusive. If you have naturalized, you are a citizen, not a permanent resident. If you were born in American Samoa, you are a noncitizen national, not a citizen. If you hold a Green Card, you are a lawful permanent resident, not a “noncitizen authorized to work” (even though, in the ordinary English sense, you are). If you are a refugee, asylee, EAD holder, or on a work visa, you are a “noncitizen authorized to work,” even if your authorization has no expiration date.

The attestation is under penalty of perjury, so if you are not sure which category fits, look at the immigration document you actually hold and match the status on that document to the four boxes above before signing.

If You Need Help Filling Out Section 1

You are the one who has to fill out Section 1, but if a language barrier or other reason makes that hard, a preparer or translator can help. Whoever assists you must complete the Supplement A certification on page 3 of the form. There is no limit on how many preparers or translators you can use.³

What Happens After You Check the Box

Once Section 1 is done, the employer completes Section 2 within three business days of your first day of work. You present original, unexpired documents from the Form I-9 Lists of Acceptable Documents: either one List A document that proves both identity and work authorization, or one List B document (identity) paired with one List C document (work authorization).²

The combination is your choice. Your employer cannot tell you which document to bring, cannot demand to see a Green Card or a passport specifically, and cannot reject a valid driver’s license paired with a valid Social Security card because they would rather have seen something else.³ Asking for more or different documents than the form requires is “document abuse” and can carry civil penalties if done with a discriminatory purpose.⁶

If you checked box 1 or box 2, that is generally the end of the process—your work authorization does not expire. If you checked box 3, the same is true in almost every case, with the temporary I-551 exception noted above. If you checked box 4, expect your employer to reverify your work authorization on or before the expiration date you wrote in Section 1, at which point you again get to choose which valid List A or List C document to present.³

1
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Completing Section 1, Employee Information and Attestation
2
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Form I-9 Acceptable Documents
3
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Instructions for Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification
4
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Handbook for Employers M-274 – 7.1 Lawful Permanent Residents (LPR)
5
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Automatic Employment Authorization Document (EAD) Extension
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 8 USC 1324b – Unfair Immigration-Related Employment Practices