Form I-9 and E-Verify: The Employer’s Guide for International Companies

Every US employer must complete Form I-9 for every new hire, including US citizens. The employee completes Section 1 by their first day of work. You complete Section 2 within three business days of that first day. E-Verify is a separate system, voluntary under federal law and mandatory in several states.

Most first-time US employers know the form exists. What catches them out is the timing, the fact that they cannot ask for particular documents, and reverification. A rule change in March 2026 also removed the chance to fix many small errors for free.

What is Form I-9?

Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, records that you checked a new employee’s identity and their right to work in the United States. It applies to every employee hired in the US, citizens included. There is no small-employer exemption and no first-hire exemption. One employee in the US means one Form I-9.

The current edition is dated 01/20/25 and expires 05/31/2027. Employers running electronic I-9 systems were required to display the 05/31/2027 expiration date by 31 July 2026.

What documents can you accept?

This is where most international employers go wrong, and it is worth getting exactly right.

The employee presents either one document from List A, or one from List B plus one from List C. Never both a List A document and a List B or C document.

The employee chooses. You do not.

You may also accept a receipt for a replacement document in limited cases, generally valid for 90 days. Receipts cannot be used if the job will last fewer than three business days.

What you cannot do when checking documents

You cannot tell an employee which documents to bring. Your job is to accept what they present if it reasonably appears genuine and relates to the person.

Two behaviours cause most of the trouble:

1. Specifying documents. Asking for a driving licence and a Social Security card is not a helpful instruction. It is an unfair documentary practice.
2. Over-documenting. Collecting a Permanent Resident Card and a Social Security card when the Permanent Resident Card alone is enough.

Both fall under Section 1324b of the Immigration and Nationality Act and are enforced by the Justice Department’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section. The rule exists to stop citizenship-status discrimination, and it applies even when the employer is being careful rather than hostile. Our guide to what US employers can and cannot ask during reference checks covers the same principle in the hiring conversation.

How long do you have to complete Form I-9?

The employee completes Section 1 no later than their first day of work for pay. You complete Section 2 within three business days of that first day, and the first day counts as day one. A Monday start at a Monday to Friday business means Section 2 is due by Thursday.

If the business operates seven days a week, weekends count as business days.

You may not ask someone to complete Section 1 before they have accepted a job offer.

Can you examine documents over video?

Only if you are enrolled in E-Verify and in good standing. Employers who are not enrolled must examine original documents in person.

Employers who qualify can use the alternative procedure. It requires a live video interaction with the employee holding the same documents shown in the copies. You must keep clear copies of both sides of every document examined and mark the form to show the alternative procedure was used. You must also offer it consistently rather than picking and choosing by nationality.

This matters more for international employers than for domestic ones. A UK or European company hiring its first US person often has nobody in the country to do an in-person check. If you are not in E-Verify, your options are an authorised representative acting on your behalf, which leaves you liable for their mistakes, or getting someone there.

Supplement A and Supplement B, the parts people miss

Two supplements replaced what used to be Section 3, and both catch out companies that completed the initial form correctly and then stopped thinking about it.

Supplement A is for a preparer or translator who helped the employee complete Section 1.

Supplement B handles reverification and rehire, and it is the one that creates ongoing obligations:

• Reverification. When an employee’s temporary work authorisation is expiring, you reverify on or before the expiry date. Miss the date and you have an employee working without documented authorisation.
• Rehire. If a former employee returns within three years of the original form’s completion date, you can use Supplement B rather than starting again. Beyond three years, you complete a new Form I-9.

What you must never reverify:

• US citizens and non-citizen nationals
• Lawful permanent residents with a Permanent Resident Card, including an expiring one
• Any List B identity document

Reverifying someone who is exempt is not a harmless extra check. It can itself be discrimination under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

How to correct an error on Form I-9

Errors get corrected, not hidden. The method matters, because a badly corrected form looks worse to an inspector than an uncorrected one.

1. Draw a single line through the incorrect information. It must stay readable.
2. Write the correct information.
3. Initial and date the correction with today’s date.

Never use correction fluid. Never erase. Never backdate. Only the employee can correct Section 1, so a Section 1 error goes back to them rather than getting fixed by HR. The employer corrects Section 2.

Documented good-faith correction counts in your favour in an inspection. A form that has been tidied up to look untouched does not.

What is E-Verify, and is it required?

E-Verify is an online system that compares Form I-9 information against DHS and Social Security Administration records. It runs after the I-9, not instead of it.

Under federal law it is voluntary for most private employers. Two things override that:

• Federal contracts. FAR clause 52.222-54 requires covered contractors to enrol within 30 calendar days of contract award. It flows down to subcontracts over $3,500 for services or construction performed in the US.
• State law. Several states require it of private employers regardless of federal contracts.

Which states require E-Verify?

Other states have narrower rules covering public contractors or specific industries, and more legislate each year. Check the state where the employee actually sits, not where your entity is registered.

Florida is worth knowing in detail, because it is a common landing spot for European companies. SB 1718 took effect on 1 July 2023 and covers private employers with 25 or more employees. Fines can reach $1,000 per day, and three violations within 24 months can put business licences at risk.

How does E-Verify work?

You create a case from the completed I-9 by the third business day after the employee starts work for pay. The system returns one of several results.

What is a Tentative Nonconfirmation?

A mismatch means the information did not match government records. It does not mean the person cannot work. The usual causes are a name change that was never reported, a typo, or an out-of-date record.

You must notify the employee privately, give them the Further Action Notice, and let them decide whether to contest. If they contest, they get eight federal working days from referral to sort it out with DHS or SSA.

While a case is pending you cannot terminate, suspend, cut hours, withhold pay, or delay training. Acting early exposes you to an E-Verify violation and a discrimination claim at the same time. Only a Final Nonconfirmation gives you grounds to act.

What are the penalties for getting Form I-9 wrong?

Paperwork violations run from $288 to $2,861 per form under the inflation adjustment published on 2 January 2025. Those amounts were still current at the time of writing.

Knowingly employing someone without work authorisation costs more:

The arithmetic is what stings. A company with 100 flawed forms is looking at $28,800 to $286,100 before anything else is considered.

What changed in March 2026

On 16 March 2026, ICE updated its Form I-9 inspection fact sheet and reclassified more than ten categories of error from technical to substantive. Technical errors could be corrected within ten business days without a fine. Substantive errors cannot.

Errors that now trigger an immediate penalty include:

• Missing employee date of birth
• Missing A-Number or USCIS number
• Missing first day of employment
• Incomplete document details in Section 2, even where copies were retained
• Failures in how the remote examination procedure was carried out
• Audit trail gaps in electronic I-9 systems

The free fix is gone for a lot of common mistakes. Auditing your own files before ICE arrives is now the only reliable way to reduce exposure. An inspection starts with a Notice of Inspection, and you get at least three business days to produce the forms. If a fine is proposed, you have 30 calendar days to request a hearing.

The five mistakes we see most often

1. Treating it as paperwork for the payroll provider. The I-9 is the employer’s legal obligation. A payroll bureau processing paychecks is not doing this for you. The difference is covered in our guide to how Employer of Record works.
2. Starting someone before Section 1 exists. Remote onboarding across time zones makes this easy to miss, and the deadline does not move.
3. Forgetting reverification. The initial form gets done properly, the expiry date goes in nobody’s calendar, and eighteen months later the authorisation has lapsed.
4. Confusing work authorisation with visa status. An employee’s visa category determines whether they can work at all. The I-9 records that you checked. They are separate steps, and our guide to US visa types covers the first one.
5. Bolting the I-9 onto a background check. Different processes, different rules. Running them together tends to produce document requests that are not allowed. See background check rules for US employers.

Who completes the I-9 if you use an Employer of Record?

The Employer of Record does, because the Employer of Record is the legal employer. That is the point of the model. The employee works for you day to day, and the entity carrying the I-9 obligation, the E-Verify enrolment where required, and the penalty exposure is the EOR.

For a company hiring its first one or two people in the US, this removes the most common failure point. There is usually nobody in the country to examine documents in person, and nobody watching the three-day clock. There is also no reason a UK finance team would know that Georgia sets its E-Verify threshold at ten employees, or that a Permanent Resident Card must never be reverified.