Summary of federal immigration law
Verifying employment eligibility (the I-9)
Penalties for violating the law

Last updated: June 3, 2001

Overview of federal immigration law

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), as amended, makes it illegal for an employer to knowingly hire or continue to employ any person who is unauthorized to work in the United states. IRCA also outlines strict requirements for employers to verify a worker's eligibility, bans job discrimination based on national origin or citizenship status, and establishes civil and criminal penalties for employers who violate the law. An unauthorized alien is someone who has not been lawfully admitted to the United States for permanent residence or who is not authorized to work in the U.S.

Under the IRCA, it is unlawful for any employer to:

• knowingly hire an alien not authorized to work in America. This includes cases in which an employer actually knows a person is an unauthorized alien as well as situations in which any person exercising reasonable care should have known from facts and circumstances that a worker was an illegal alien.
• hire any person without complying with IRCA's employment verification and recordkeeping requirements
• continue to employ an alien after finding out the person is — or has become — an unauthorized alien.

Verifying employment eligibility (the I-9 form)

To comply with federal immigration laws, every employer is required to verify the employment eligibility of, and complete a Form I-9 (Employment Eligibility Verification Form) for, everyone hired after Nov. 6, 1986.

Employers who show they've made a "good faith" effort to verify employees' eligibility establish a defense that they have not knowingly hired an unauthorized alien.

You can download I-9s at the USCIS Web site. Employers may photocopy I-9s or print their own, as long as both sides of the form are reproduced.

Filling out the I-9 is a three-step process:

1. All new employees must fill out, sign and date Section 1 of the I-9 form. If necessary, a translator can help the employee and the translator must then complete the "Preparer/Translator Certification" on the I-9.

2. Within three business days of the employee's start date, the worker must present to the employer an original document(s) that establish identity and employment eligibility. The employer then examines each document to determine that it relates to the employee and reasonably appears to be genuine.

3. After the employer examines the employee document(s), the employer must complete, sign and date Section 2 of the I-9 form, recording the title, issuing authority, number and expiration date of the document(s).

Note: When an employee's work authorization has expired, an employer cannot continue to employ that worker. To continue working, the employee must present to the employer a document showing either an extension of the work authorization or a new work authorization. The employer then completes, signs and dates Section 3 of the I-9 with the new information.

Penalties for violating the law

IRCA provides stiff penalties for employers who violate the law either in action (by knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized workers) or in paperwork. If an employer knowingly hires unauthorized owrkers, or continues to employ workers whom the employer knows are not authorized to work in the United States, he or she will be ordered to discontinue the violation(s) and pay a civil penalty, ranging between:

• $250 and $2,000 for each unauthorized alien
• $2,000 and $5,000 for each unauthorized alien if there has been one prior violation
• $3,000 and $10,000 for each unauthorized alien if there has been two or more prior violations.

The employer could also be levied a criminal penalty if the violations involve a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring or continuing to employ unauthorized aliens. IRCA requires that the employer be fined not more than $3,000 for each unauthorized alien, face imprisonment of not more than six months — or both.

Paperwork violations can also land an employer in hot water. For violations that involve an employer's failure to complete or retain I-9s or to make them available for inspection, IRCA says that he or she must be ordered to pay a civil penalty of between $100 and $1,000 per each employee for whom the I-9 was not properly completed, retained and/or made available for inspection.

For multi-unit businesses, the law says employers with distinct, physically separate subdivisions — each handling its own hiring without regard to the practices of other subdivisions and not under the control of or common control with another subdivision — is considered a separate employer.

Legal Disclaimer
The above information is intended only to inform and not to be a substitute for the reader's seeking legal counsel. Any information given here should be examined by the reader's attorneys as to such information's applicability.