Can i document type e sign new employee checklist mississippi
hello and welcome everyone to today's webinar immigration update I nine and Eve arif I laws for small business with Christina Wallace and now let's meet our speaker Kristi walls brings over 15 years of experience practicing immigration law her concentration and business immigration has entailed solving complex immigration problems for business clients ranging from fortune 500 to smaller companies covering industries such as IT financial services construction and engineering and multimedia production she also oversees family immigration matters Global transfer issues involving consults and foreign governmental agencies and works with congressional staff to achieve results on difficult immigration matters Kristi primarily assists company executives HR professionals general counsel and the employees themselves she has presented immigration-related seminars to HR professionals on an employment eligibility verification or a verified interrelated payroll issues and proper record documentation and retention she has also spoken to relocation company's executives and in-house counsel on dealing with corporate immigration matters and how to choose immigration counsel for several years Kristi taught a course as an adjunct professor to HR managers on immigration laws in recruiting at the National Zoo's meet at the Northern Virginia Community College as part of its pH are certified curriculum she's an active member of the American Immigration Lawyers Association thank you so much for joining us today Christy the floor is now all yours hello and thank you gina and thank all of you for listening today this seminar is for employers on the topic of the administrative burden of checking us or cauterization called employment verification it is a teaching seminar that goes through the form i-9 basics what avera Phi is on the back end of the i9 process the far eve arif I clause for government contractors latest statistics on enrollment in youth would they look at the state's issues I have a lot of very dense information to cover verbally this slides highlight main points but I promise to get this three hour seminar done in less than 45 minutes and then I'll have provided you with a couple of helpful web web links to find the info that i discussed today so who is living today we have employers for small business members of the nfib and also an open forum which invited some mid to larger company representatives to sign up and listen and I hope to offer tidbits that are helpful to all okay let's start with the form i-9 the original form itself in what you do with it so if you're ready here we go the i-9 discussion includes how to completely how to complete the i-9 and how to verify a new employee the form i-9 as you all know is a one-page form it's very simple it's made to help an employer verify and an employee to complete the employment eligibility process it is legally required to be used in office of every employer on US soil who hires a new us or foreign worker or who currently employs a us or foreign worker no matter how big or small your business is the people that we must complete the i-94 are all us employees whether they're working for you full or part-time and it covers only employees that you have hired after november six 1986 so the reverse question then is food as a form i-9 exclude it obviously excludes any one who started before eleven 786 it generally does not apply to independent contractors however there are some liabilities that can flow upward I know we have people who sing out there who do use contractors and are signing onto contracts we're going to discuss federal contracts later when i get to the far you verify clause what you should know also is that the latest subpoenas from ice that you can find on the internet ask you as an employer for full data about your contractors and subcontractors when you do get a subpoena from them for those of you concerned what you want to do is get an indemnity agreement from the person or from the agency sending you factors that they verified their workers and you can ask to see verification so the law that broad in the form i-9 was erica in 1986 and since that time we have all been dealing with the paper form i-9 what is verified with form i-9 is the identity of each person that you hire and the employment eligibility of each person the checking of documents is actually the topic today that blends into e-verify traditionally until you verify came along the employer had to check the documents but don't think that you're totally exempt because if you verify you still have to use the form i-9 and you still have to touch and feel the documents to find the form i-9 I provided a helpful link in the helpful links section as you look at the screen here you can pull it up there you can also always go to the website of USCIS and pull the form i-9 for yourself the instructions or a brief actual form is on page four this is what the form looks like okay so let's break it down here's a view of section one and as you can see very small on my screen but hopefully for you all you have this slide nice and big you can see the data section of section one it's it's requiring you to put in data about your employee private information of course name address work status and notably there is a box here for this Vista curity number which you will be using any verify if you sign up to use it so first you have the employee complete this section by or on the first day of employment and what that means is you can send it out in a packet to your prospective employee before they show up for their first day of work and then you check it and what you're looking for is to make sure that it is completed signed in that they check the right box in the right hand area of what their status is the right hand area there has into the box to say if they are a US citizen if there are non city national of us for territories like Guam etc if they're a lawful permanent resident of the US which is a green card holder or if they're an alien authorized to work in the US which is someone who is foreign but has a particular work permit to work here in the US so to clarify obligations of section 1 the completion occurs during a certain phase I call it phase 1 the employers obligation in section one is both in terms of getting it right on timing when you fill it in and checking completion because you actually don't feel it in the employee does that the employer does not touch section 1 generally unless you have you disabled or non-english speaker for an employee so now let's take a look here at section 22 is the middle part of the form i-9 and this is the part where you verify what was written by the employee in section one so this is verification verification might ring a bell now you verify so even if I have to do with this section the form i-9 itself the whole thing is not replaced by using you verify okay section 2 this is a part that you classically start to use documents with you're being asked to check the documents of your employee and you have to write in the data about the documents they show you they will either show you a document for column a and if you don't use column a one document or actually a combo for foreign people it gets more complex so but if you don't use the one column a document then you use to documents one being listed in column B and one being listed in column C you have to take care of this within three business days of their employment start date so on day one your employee comes in they show up they too can pass by day three they need to come to work with the original documents to prove their work authorized in the US okay and what else are you doing here in section 2 you actually have to certify it by noting the employment start date immigration is trying to capture the fact that you complied by doing it within three days of their employment start date and it shows such as the government by your signing this and you include your name is to prepare for the company obviously that opens you to liability your people who handle I nines should be trained so as far as summarizing we've covered all of these points but we have a nice summary slide here three business days of higher and play brings acceptable documents employer checks them employer certifies and inserts all the data okay and then to get into the specifics about what are the acceptable documents US immigration has actually provided a lot of very very good clarification on their website you used to have to rely on just this page of the form i-9 it's gotten so much better because this page cause a lot of confusion we would actually talk about this page for a long time in our speeches now they clarify all your problems and questions and concerns if you go to USCIS gov and you ask about acceptable documents you'll see special website information that should address your concerns so again this comes back to the whole issue is section two but you're trying to enter document information into correct columns you need to enter enough information and details and you're going to have the same issue coming up when you use the online you verify program that brings us to the big point here which is that the i9 still has to be completed but when it comes to section 2 and verification you are not checking the documents to see if they match the M 274 handbook that the government has made you hold and look at you're going to be using e-verify if you opt into the system since we are talking about I 9s Before we jump totally into e-verify let me mention that there is section 3 section 3 is for Rivera fication this is where you verify an employee whose documents have expired or and to where you deal with an employee who used to work for you but then left your company and then returned so you simply complete it like section to accept that it's formatted differently you record all the document information the explorations in the smaller space use a choice of documents 1a or combo of B and C and just try to remember if it ever comes up that the person does not have to show you the same documents they had given you back when they complete a section 2 and they get to section 3 they can pick a myriad of documents of their choice on you again okay what do you want to do with your finished I 9 you want to take that I nine and make sure that there's only one so if you are using paper I nines you send the original the HR or you keep it directly in your HR type files if you don't have HR most people do not you should have at least a manila folder or a binder with all your I nines in them and you know in this case I'm not seeing the huge employers who have shelves of these things but if you keep them electronically that's fine too just don't keep a shadow file or a duplicate in the employees folder keep them together with all I nines alrighty at this point I wanted to go into detail about Eve era fight it's the reason that a lot of people have signed up to understand what it is and it is here and it's optional for most and it's mandatory for some and I think all of you out there want to know where we're going with it so far there is legislation that has only made it our participatory service they call it a service to employers yet it is mandatory for people who are federal contractors with the clause and certain states and municipal levels require employer's to use it we'll talk a little bit more about that so must use it who is using it but first I'm going to get into a little bit of peach on Eve arif I so what we're going to cover here quickly is what it is the do's and don'ts of the program the far clause as I mentioned and that's for anybody who is involved in a government contract you may or may not have bar caused inserted the latest statistics on enrollment by the size and type of employee the pros and cons of enrollment and which states now me and they be verifying so II verify I've given you a little preview as I was going through the i9 but II verify is an internet-based system and it's operated by the Department of Homeland Security it allows the employers to electronically verify the employment eligibility of employees instead of using that M 274 handbook for section 2 to check people's documents so what Eve arif I does is it checks the information that is provided from the form i-9 against identity and it checks the work eligibility documents and records that are currently contained in DHS and with the Social Security Administration DHS's Department of Homeland Security again and it's supposed to work well what you want to do is you log on to Eve arif I after you complete the form i-9 for a particular employee think what people's ears perk up when they hear this is is it for an employee or can I check this beforehand get to that in a sec you're not supposed to use e-verify until the person is an employee the way you use it is essentially you do two things you register your company first of all your company has to be on board with using e-verify can you register yourself to use it you then or you appoint someone to use it you want to then enter the data about any particular employee and the data you're entering is all the information that you put on the form i-9 in sections one and two then what happens is the data gets compared with the databases side of SS a VHS if you can see this slide again very tiny on my screen here but this basically says once you've entered it you're going to get a quick you know within a second or two is going to say employment eligibility hopefully it'll say employment eligibility employment authorized which means that the person has been verified and if that happens you can close the case your I nining for that person is done alternately you end up with a tentative non-confirmation and that looks like this so the yellow box up top will end up telling you for example that Social Security Administration is creating a tentative non-confirmation so essentially the initial verification results can be number one its employment authorized number two you get an SS a tentative non-confirmation for an information mismatch so there's a mismatch between the person's name and their social security number that will happen if let's say somebody has gotten married and they haven't updated their information with Social Security Administration can happen for a couple of reasons or number three DHS verification is going to be required to dig up data about employment authorization or they have to check against foreign worker documentation so DHS can also issue that tentative non-confirmation those are often resolved quickly and you just have to keep checking inside the e-verify database to see what the along do you keep checking here's here's the breakdown for a TNC so if you get a tentative non-confirmation what it means as I said is that the social security number is not valid according to SS a records or DHS records it does not mean that the employee is not authorized to work in the US it might mean that but it doesn't necessarily mean that so what you want to do at this point is proceed with a formulaic method and you have to be careful otherwise you get into discrimination problems and you also have to act very quickly so you now have to take little time out of your day when you get a TNC to immediately go deal with the issue so if you get a tentative non-confirmation and you're looking at this new employee who's in front of you what you want to do is you immediately inform the employee you're going to print that tentative non-confirmation and show it to them and you're going to review it with the employee privately there's been some issue about what private means in this case you really do have to be careful that you're in a private place because you're talking about you're impacting the way people sometimes will even view somebody besides the fact that you're there are privacy concerns talking about data on people so when the person is looking at the TNC they're going to tell you if they want to contest it or to not contest it if you have somebody illegal in front of you it doesn't understand the system they are illegal they don't want to go further they're not going to contest so that'll be the end of that and you can let them go at that point if you are contesting either way you an
the employee have to make your decision and sign and date this actual form and then the e-verify system wants to be clicked to let to know that you have notified that employee and that way it's going to pop up a date by which you have to get back into the e-verify system and tell it that you resolve the issue so now it's going to give you basically 10 days but technically it's eight federal work days so the employee will get eight federal work days item number four here eight federal work days to resolve this issue by calling or visiting the Social Security Administration or it's different if isset EHS but essentially if it's an S mismatch a lot of times this is based on marriage they are going to have to go in and fix things up so number five what you want to do as the employer is to make sure you let that employee continue to work during the process of his resolution you cannot fire him at this point and you cannot take any adverse action and I'm going to mention here that you cannot run the e-verify program before you hire them before they're on board and then the last thing you do is you're going to be revisiting the e-verify system periodically they mentioned daily they mentioned periodically but you want to see if the person has been authorized so either he's been employment authorized or you have to you're going to update the employee data that he gives you or you're going to see if you got a case continuance or you're going to see if DHS has a verification that's in process while they're checking records for foreign nationals or you're going to end up seeing that he gets the final non-confirmation so if you receive a final non-confirmation you must terminate the employee but what I would suggest is if there is any look of concern on the person's face and they feel they do not deserve to be terminated what you ought to be doing is also calling a lawyer at this point or calling the e-verify helpline definitely print the slip at this juncture and reach out for more help unless that seems to be the easy end of an issue so here on this side what we wanted to do is just give you a quick summary it was explained up till this point a little bit but a summary of your employer responsibilities as you would understand them so far minus the caveats what you do when you sign up your bini for Eve arif I is that you have to agree to a memorandum of understanding that you're signing up the company and that all employment paperwork may be audited reviewed by the US government at any time that technically would be true with an i-9 as well but you are putting it in writing and clicking boxes to understand that you also are agreeing that you're going to be using e-verify only for new hire there's a caveat on this has to do with government contractors but it's only for new hires not people who already have I nines in the file and are already working for you third of all if you begin to use e-verify as you always have with I nines but it's more important in this case because you're on a live IT file but you are going to have to verify every employee no later than the third business day of higher and I know there's a lot of slippage on that when it comes to regular I knives because we take a look at employers I nines you're going to have to be more rigorous in getting to the computer and verifying people and doing the i9 than if you just do it on paper you end up applying a verified to all new hires and you do it regardless of their citizenship status ok so the employee also has some rights and what they basically are is that if he is not confirmed ora tentatively not come from pnc he needs to be told about it which we covered you do that right away he has the right to contest that TN z and he has the right to work while the TNC is contested ok the the do's and don'ts of handling the e-verify program were actually given to nfib as a sort of checklist and I wonder if it is listed under the helpful links but we gave it to them as the word document so that you could peruse it and just check on everything as you get ready to Eve Arif I somebody as you hit a tentative non-confirmation and just make sure that you're doing everything appropriately I'll be happy to go over that as we get near the end if we still have time left there's a bunch of points on it ok so then a quick breather from learning pure how-to information I wanted to give you a little bit of information on avera faiz enrollment statistics the enrollment statistics that you see here were pulled from basically two sources the first one as a point of reference is a West that report that was given to DHS it was researched on for DHS last December and what it is showing back then is that 237,000 employers participate in Iver fi and you compare that to the total number of private sector employers and you end up with four percent of all employers using verify the number has gone up in this one year so they are showing 302,000 employers out of the 6.5 million private-sector employers out there I actually think they're three and two thousand number is not only private sector employers I think that number has gone up and it includes non private sector employers because of all the states that have signed up to use e-verify and agencies state agencies so the majority of people who use e-verify are larger employers and they are more likely to use it than small employers the people the West I report was very helpful we provided that link to if you're curious to know who is not participating it explains it in great detail as they're trying to figure out how to get people to voluntarily sign to using this law in this program and the service so it I didn't want to go into very many opinions about anything but it just lists very frankly the reasons that people enunciated for not using it even though they're familiar with you verify and which employers typically don't participate broken down by employer size and industry so you get a really nice bar graph all on one page telling you what's going on with the use and if you want to formulate thoughts on the concept of e-verify it's all it's all out there been researched okay now this part is for employers who have federal contract work and I'm going to go over the far clause so the far clause has to do with contracts with the federal acquisition regulation clause and what it does is it requires avera Phi for all or part of the workforce of an employer who's dealing with such a contract the people who use it are the federal contractors the primes and their subs that get flow down work federal contractors and subcontractors who fall under the Federal Acquisition regulation cause they will have it written into the contract based on the type of contract and they must register some or all of their employees under you verify the government is putting the clause in there for you the regulation was published in 2008 and the way it reads basically is that if the far language is in a federal contract for a contract that is awarded after the state here which is September 8 2009 then the federal contractors are going to have to agree to use e-verify and what they're going to have to verify or all the workers that are new to the company hired during a contract term and all existing workers performing work under the contract existing workers performing work under the contract administrative personnel who does not actually perform work doesn't count the failure to use e-verify when you have this clause of course ends ends with the loss of current and future federal contracts unless you get a waiver so it's important to comply if you're required to few more specifics on the topic or just to point out that the far language does have to be written into the federal contract and the contract if it exists has to be amended and handed back to the employer by the government the contract has to have been awarded after this particular date the performance actually has a period of time it needs to take more than 120 days for them to insert the clause the contract value will be exceeding simplified a simplified acquisition threshold of a hundred thousand dollars and this is a calculation that we can help clients understand since the contract may include various terms and the performance of the work has to take place in part or in full on US soil for it to be relevant and applicable so the the work has to be taking place here in the US and there are some rules for indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts are called ID IQs and basically that means that it's substantial time and work remains they can be subject to needing to use before the particular employees so if you're a contractor you're dealing directly with the far a verified clause you need to notify your subcontractors so your subcontractors will have to use e-verify if they're on the site but only if the main contract of course includes far e-verify it has to be for services or construction with value over 3000 that the subcontractor is delivering as part of this prime and the prime contractor is the one who is taking responsibility here so as a result he needs to include an indemnification clause in the subconscious contract he may ask that subcontractor to provide proof of enrollment and there's a page that can be printed and given over to the Prime and there are fines and penalties that accrue to the prime contractor if they if the sub is continuing to work in violation of the e-verify requirement and the prime especially knows that that may be happening so the threshold goes up anytime you have knowledge of any illegal action of course okay you verify has some timing rules everybody should remember that enrolling in e-verify as a federal contractor has to occur within 30 calendar days of the award date of a contract with far clause then people should be verified all new hires and all existing people who are working under the contract need to be verified within 90 days of enrollment if you decide that the company will choose the option to initiate verification of all existing employees because you do have the option to go totally under you verify then you need to choose that option within 180 calendar days of telling you verify that you are choosing to take the whole company into e-verify and then after a 90-day phase-in period you have to verify all your new hires and you need to do that within 3 business days so as far as d verify will reiterate here that please do not use e-verify prior to a job offer and acceptance by your applicant it is not a pre-screening tool that's not what it's used for so it's not to make your life easier you need to hire them bring them on board then use e-verify and then when they're not confirmed they will run back and forth to the Social Security Administration while you have to allow them to continue to work and resolve everything while they are an employee with you and you let them go after words when it cannot be confirmed when their employment verification cannot be confirmed you may input the data into the e-verify system after an offer is made and accepted before the first day but what it shouldn't create is speeding up or slowing down of their first day it's interesting that that comes up the Department of Homeland Security refers to this issue by saying that if you have two people one gets a ten see one does not because the other guy gets verified easily they should not be approaching their start date at different speeds so you do whatever is a regular practice and custom for the company you don't speed it up or slow it down because of the TMZ if you take any unusual actions with people who get TNCs you are potentially facing legal action by the government you have the Office of Special Counsel for unfair immigration-related practices who can come after you you have the employee who is able to go to osc the employee is able to sue there's a poster that tells them that they can do that and you require to put up your either if I poster on the wall as far as federal contractors go the misuse and improper use of e-verify can lead to termination from a federal contract okay the e-verify pros and cons here so mostly I would leave it to you to create your thoughts and ideas about how you feel with you verify I gave a few pros and cons about it that were gleaned from other sites but you have with you verify because everybody is wondering you know do I have to use it do I not actually again it's voluntary unless you're mandated so what the verification is doing is it's trying to be a simplified method for employers on the easiest level the most basic level you have an online verification system instead of a manual verification where you use the booklet for section 2 so it's supposed to help you not worry about using the booklet to check people's documents anymore and to make sure that you're doing it right there are protections however if you are using the booklet you are the type of employer who cares the fact that you really use the booklet is one of the policies in house new you gain protection when you're audited for your i9 by using it the verification sort of removes that whole issue it obviously gives the government immediate notification of people who are coming to work for you it gives the ability to screen against actual employment of illegals using mismatched in certain photo fraud documents on the other hand there is the issue of using a fraudulent set of data and the potential for increased activity on stealing data from people in order to clear the verify system so there may be at an industry that crops up as a result of you verify to help people take privacy data from people anyway there is no immunity from government action for using e-verify it may mitigate fines but there have been Steve finds already levied on you verify users in the last couple of years it hangs up certain US workers who are not verifiable it can raise a company's red flag before the US government and what is expected to come out is the monitoring and compliance branch of e-verify just to make sure that everybody is technically using the system correctly as you know with the form i-9 there are technical finds for the you know improper notation with pens or using wite-out on I nines the monitoring and compliance branch will be a technical oversight board of the e-verify system so probably the same thing will come out even with the system there are three basic types of legislation which are causing people to have to use e-verify what they do is they require mandatory use option one is mandatory use for all employers in a state number two it's requiring a state is requiring various public entities or contractors to use e-verify and then the third main type of legislation by states are where they require only public contractors to use e-verify for state jobs municipal level jobs local level jobs and then what we also see in fact in North Carolina they're phasing in the use of e-verify based on the level and size of a corporation so they take a look at the number of employees you report that and then you have to double check the rules and see if you're subject to you verify the state by state use there are some good materials out there not very many actually we we like la logics is materials they are known to lay this out on a monthly basis so you can check for the latest e-verify requirements at the federal state county and municipal levels and here's a summary it's showing when you verify is required which states and column to fall into the type of type of law so you've got on the left-hand column all our most employers public employers and contractors public employers only contractors only employers through local municipal requirement only and there are some laws that are hanging be verifying space so not every state is requiring the use of e-verify in fact Maryland and DC do not require the use of Eve fi for anything Virginia has it I believe for government contracts and then Prince William County right here requires the use of e-verify in certain situations ok the law logics people can send you their breakdown for free just ask where you go to their web site you linked in and you ask for the e-verify rule state by state and they're going to send you a nice packet with this handy map on it it shows you the states agai
it's just a different color coded ways you can find your state easily and see if there's a requirement in there and then it breaks it down into these columns that talk about you know what level jurisdiction is requiring it the effective data happened the employers are impacted what your penalties are going to be it even tells you about that and it provides a link to the actual regulation ok there is I wrote here States but there was one state that said no to the expansion of e-verify on the california governor jerry brown signed the employment acceleration act there is some background reading on why he did it but he felt that it was hurting the state and its prohibiting the state cities counties from requiring the use of it it does take that law does take an account that federal contracts in a condition for receiving federal funds those people are required to use e-verify in accordance with federal law which trumps state law alrighty I wanted to just kind of circle back around to a different topic now it's all related to all of this but basically what we've looked at here today is we talked about the form i-9 the form i-9 is important because you can be fined if you make technical errors on it or if you have substantive non-compliance or if you're actually hiring illegal workers and you know about it that's how people get fined for I nine so I wanted to come back to that topic you verify is one more way to potentially get fined from a technical perspective but then misuse of e-verify or the improper use of the TNC process the tentative non-confirmation process but basically your liability lies in getting audited and immigration finding illegals at your worksite are getting audited and having them find technical violations on your forms the e-verify program is added on to the i9 so you still have to keep your I nines up to date and then the verification part is perhaps one less stress for the employer to worry about using the handbook checking and and less of a stress for actually having illegal workers found on your worksite and disrupting the workplace so there is the one potential big upside for the employer of using e-verify but don't forget that you can still be fined as all of these bullets show you for knowingly hiring illegal for to continuing to employ illegal workers for first time and repeat offender employers for substantive violations for uncorrected technical violations and then don't forget to that avera Phi is causing a new method of behaved behavior for employers but if they are to use e-verify in their desperate for the employees they will keep them off the books you're not allowed to run double books if you are using the e-verify system and you've signed up for it you have to run everybody through Eve arif I you can't double booked so that you've got a group of employees who obviously you know is illegal and you're not going to put them in verify that's just not allowed you know this is intuitive but it's worth pointing out the other punishments that employers face and why we even have these i 9 and larger e-verify discussions is that you really are trying to avoid the worst penalties which are criminal prosecution for repeat offenses and regis offenses you know purposely keeping people off the books of being agreed to suspend the debarment of part or a whole unit if you have the knowing hire of illegals and this has to do with government contractors they definitely want to avoid being debarred at all costs I listed here the amount of fines that come out of the i9 system so ice comes in checks you and then ends up slapping finds down it's done for various reasons but you have the 375 to sixteen thousand dollar range and then you've got the technical violation range just a second bullet point and then they run a formula with a chart where they upped the violation amounts by certain percentages depending on how many offenses you've been caught with so if they've come in and checked you twice here in a second second level when you get a higher percentage of fines slapped down so the takeaway basically from all of this is that you're going to go home go back to work and make sure that you have an i-9 related compliance program you will want to check your i-9s conduct an internal audit take action if you see errors on there you are going to still want to check for Social Security no match letters that's still an issue it was gone for a while its back do not ignore identity theft issues this is something new that not completely new it's always been there with I nines the identity theft and the potential for it during the e-verify k shin process and still come back to you and you don't want to be liable for leaving people's information out and about you want your people who do I nines to receive some decent training and it's worth considering using e-verify and other best practices to potentially mitigate the chances of having illegals on the work site and being find at the heavier substantive penalty levels and basically just end up with a compliance plan so that you are in compliance with the employment eligibility verification laws that are out there and at this point I just want to turn it back over and hope that the seminar helped you learn a number of important players and that you can contact us anytime if you have any questions and thank you very much for listening great thank you so much Christy we do have a few moments or some questions and we have had several come in so open the floor now to questions try to get to them but not able to get to your question we will try to follow up with you after the webinar all right Chris you go ahead and take our first question the first one out can employee check themselves to see if they will be easily be verified you know that's a really good question and it has come up a lot there is a system called Eve arif I self-check that's being phased in so you can check in on yourself before you go into a new place of employment and you know potentially become a burden to your new employer there's a psychological aspect to that as you can imagine so the employee fills in a bunch of codes about every you know dog and mother he's ever had and then he can look into the e-verify system and right now they have allowed Arizona Colorado Idaho Mississippi Virginian DC residents to use it and I have not checked on it recently sometimes when these things are new programs they allow use and they stopped usin they allow used again so I think that's where we lost stood in which states residents were allowed to use it all right great our next question is how do I know that the document given to prove employment eligibility are legitimate is there a photo example of each document format you know there is a photo example of certain documents so II verify will show you if you have for nationals in particular that you're hiring it will show you the view of the EAD card on for my 766 so that is a work permit card you can see the person and match up against the green card is on for my 551 and then the US passport or the passport card can be checked too great and we've had several questions come in wondering why that employer should not keep the i9 an employee file why can you repeat that one why the employer should not keep yes they're just curious why why you don't keep the i9 in the employee file what's the liability right was the issue with keeping the i9 in an employee file because they're supposed to be publicly accessible files so there is a piece of this talk that I didn't go into it's how you keep your files and their public access files they have to be turned over immediately to the government upon request you can ask for three business days or you turn it over it doesn't have to be granted but it should be granted and you don't want to be plucking them out of personnel files at that point it's just not good policy so they should be all together in one chunk and the other part that goes with this is if you have a policy the way you use i 9 and the way you check employees and if you have changes where you were doing it one way you copy documents you stapled it to the back and or let's say you didn't use and then you change and started stapling you want to make notations of your policy changes and have it all in one place alright great we've got several questions coming about i-9 form still this pretty wants to know if the i-9 forms were not filled out when someone was hired what needs to be done now the correct the situation basically what you're doing is you're making a policy change you're going from non-compliant to comply an employer which is always a good thing so you know don't worry about it too much there's not much you can do you just want to take all your employees and have them fill in a form i-9 and put put a piece of paper into your i-9 binder or your folder and say here it is November 30th and today we are making sure that we comply with I nines better and you know there's a mitigating factor there if you do get fined if you get audited and you get fine and you're finally on board because you listen to a program you should note that and you know hopefully they'll understand so anything that wasn't done within three business days of higher will be overlooked because you now realize it's time to take care of business right great our next question is if the i9 is not correct who is the responsible party is it the employer or the person signing the i-9 form you know the employer is the one is going to get fined for technical problems but you're supposed to be trained if not trained you're supposed to least be aware and have read the i9 rules and know how to fill them in and yeah there are there are penalties there are civil penalties and actually everyone scares us with this we haven't personally seen it happen but criminal penalties that can accrue to HR or branch managers who don't fill in i9 properly all right great our next question is do i copy documents for the form i-9 anymore and should I keep the copies yes I think now more than ever you should keep a copy keep consistency you have your i9 staple the documents they show you behind it and if you do we verify you also do either find you print out the confirmation at the end in the way I see it it's more work but it does help with the verification of people if you have a heightened fear of hiring illegals you do hire illegals there's a whole discussion on you know whether you knew it whether you didn't know it whether you check them properly and we tried to go over that today but you verify is host to help avoid that from happening great your next question what if you do not physically see your employee may be there a telex meeting with you our photo copy documents fine if you never see them know you are someone's supposed to see them you need to have an Asian to check sir documents so you know if you have a remote employee you want to find somebody who can check their documents in the state where they are employed the notary might do that service for you you can look around you might have a lawyer's office to have them come in and show their documentation to them and then you get a sign-off form that the documents have been provided in original in order to get hired I mean in order to properly fill in the form i-9 okay great our expert wants to note how do you iver off' I for old employees you don't iver file and employees actually you just go forward go forward time for I think one more last question as personal so if you participate in a verified and the state says you don't have to enroll until a certain date can you stop using it can you read that one again if you participate in iver if I and the state says you don't have to enroll in tele certain dates can you stop using it stop you well you do so two things that somehow so you have this say says you don't have to participate until a certain date so you already enrolled and then you want to stop using it because you don't have to use it until the future right far too hard to unlock yourself from iver 05 but i can check on that question and get back to the person listed on the website the answer has been no in the past but i had enough people ask than I need to check on that great what I'm going to put up on the screen we do have some of those additional documents and resources for people to take a look at as long as the helpful links and for even further detailed list you can go to NFIB calm / webinars immigration there is a full list there of helpful documents and resources for more information on you verify and I nine and if we didn't have time to get your question we will try to follow up with you following the webinar I thank you so much Christie for talking with us today about the extremely important topic do you have any final comments before we wrap up I don't have any particular comments but we did provide a lot of helpful links and we hope that everybody uses them because the information is being to sit nicely by the government in order to make the ease of use of e-verify palatable to everybody right great thank you so much Christine thank you to everyone who attended today
