The use of an I-9 Form is required by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) bureau of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to confirm worker eligibility.

Employers must have each of their employees fill out the Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9, or be subject to fines of as much as five and a half thousand dollars per unauthorized employee, along with other penalties. Such employers may also be subject to sanctions called for under other laws, especially those related to immigration.

Even failing to keep proper records can carry fines, to the tune of over a thousand dollars per missing or problematic form, regardless of whether the employee is legally authorized to work in the United States, so great is the value attached by the government to the I-9 Form.

Individuals, employer, employee, or otherwise, who intentionally commits or participates in document fraud may be subject to over three thousand dollars for the first offense and as much as six and a half thousand for subsequent offenses. Data must be reverified as essential, such as in the situation of expiring supporting documents. Records must be retained even for former employees, up to one year following the end of employment.

The “I-9 requirement” came into being with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), which law stipulated that employers must verify an employee’s identity and eligibility for employment in the United States. Employers may be liable even in the case of hired subcontractors who by themselves employ unauthorized workers. Such verification is not needed in the situation of volunteers.

IRCA also provided for several anti-discrimination requisites so that issues like national origin and citizenship status can’t be used against job candidates. Thus, in order to avoid any possibility of a lawsuit, corporations won’t ask for the I-9 form to be filled out until after someone is really hired.