Friday, April 19, 2013

SHRM Article - Increased Audits by ICE

The number of I-9 audits multiplied over the past decade, rising from almost none—just three in 2004—to 500 in 2008 and 3,004 in 2012.

Employers should pay attention accordingly, as the fines for substantive and procedural violations of the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) can add up quickly, Daniel Brown, an attorney with Fragomen in Washington, D.C., said on March 12, 2013, at the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2013 Employment Law & Legislative Conference.


Penalties

For knowing violations, IRCA penalties range from:

$375-$3,200 for each unauthorized employee for a first offense.$3,200-$6,500 per unauthorized worker for a second offense.
$4,300-$16,000 per worker for a third offense.

For paperwork violations, the fines range from $110 to $1,100 per violation, he added.

When the government assesses penalties, the biggest factor it examines is the percentage of reviewed I-9 forms that have errors, said Brown, who is a former counselor to the assistant secretary at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If more than 50 percent have paperwork violations, for example, the paperwork fines typically are $900 per I-9, which may be adjusted up or down, he added.

Targeted Employers

I-9 audits used to be random, but now they are more often the result of disgruntled former employees complaining to ICE.

Also, ICE likes to go after companies connected with the nation’s critical infrastructure, such as those that run power plants, food-service businesses, those connected to airports, or anything else that seems like “homeland security writ large,” Brown said.

Allen Smith, J.D., is manager of workplace law content for SHRM. Follow him on Twitter
@SHRMlegaleditor.

Aurico recommends the following five I-9 Best Practices:
  • Designate dedicated I-9 specialists for your organization and centralize I-9 compliance
  • Electronic I-9 creates a compliant program, which incorporates new changes to Form I-9 with data field validation and expiring-deadline tracking is functional
  • Store Eligibility paperwork and I-9’s in a secure place
  • Internal I-9 Audits/External I-9 Audits-employers should not only audit I-9’s on a regular basis, but include a best practice of outsourcing to a third party an external I-9 Audit with remediation tool built in.
  • Record compliance policies and procedures

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