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Recruitment & Retention

Compliance 101: Work-Eligibility Verification and the IRCA

Paige Vesuvio

Increasingly strict regulation of work-eligibility verification has left employers vulnerable to stiff penalties for noncompliance. These include hefty fines, debarment from government contracts, loss of business and, in some states, criminal prosecution.

The federally mandated Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) is one of the latest in a series of regulations having a significant impact on companies and their HR and talent managers.

The IRCA requires U.S. employers to verify the employment-eligibility status of employees and makes it unlawful to knowingly hire or continue to employ unauthorized workers. The IRCA also creates confusion by prohibiting five types of identification that previously qualified as proof of eligibility for new employees.

Many employers are distressed by the increasing complexity of this issue. In addition to managing escalating paperwork involved with the new verification process, which is a drain on both material resources and man-hours, the IRCA also requires that companies absorb the financial impact of compliance — which can total millions of dollars each year — to avoid being penalized.

As more and more states add their own legislation to the growing list of I-9 verification requirements, employers and HR managers are scratching their heads as to how they can immediately comply with the regulations and deal with the resulting impact to their workforces.

Staying Ahead of the Game

There are several simple steps a company can take to make sure it remains ahead of the compliance curve and to reduce its risk of incurring penalties. Following are a few tips to help facilitate employers’ compliance with work-eligibility verification.

• Keep records up to date and be aware of pending legislation. Ensuring vital talent management data and records are up-to-date for all employees is crucial to an organization’s overall performance. It also can be a necessary step to help ensure a safe and secure workforce. Further, as important as it is to keep employee records up  to date, it is imperative to be cognizant of significant dates and approaching deadlines.
• States are passing new legislation related to I-9 verification frequently, and if a business operates in these states, it can be essential to comply immediately. Employers need to monitor and view expiration dates for employees’ work-authorization documentation and Employment Eligibility Verifications (EEV) results, and track key dates such as green card and alien registration expiration dates. Some I-9 solutions providers offer management alerts in advance of these dates to make it easier to stay aware and in compliance.
• Transition to electronic reporting tools. Managing the compliance process with user-friendly electronic or Web-based solutions can alleviate the costs and time associated with properly submitting critical employee information to meet verification standards.

Specifically, HR managers should opt for solutions that can be tailored to their business’ workflow specifications and allow employers to securely and automatically verify, register and store candidate data via a paperless process.

Seeking out a hosted solution that enables employers to pre-enroll and execute electronic I-9 forms for new employees through a seamless interface with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would be the ideal solution for an HR manager.

A system that offers detailed and flexible reporting functionality and ensures document compliance across an enterprise provides HR leadership with the compliance tools necessary to keep up with changing legislation.