Your company should develop an immigration compliance program, including a self-audit of your I-9 forms, training for applicable management, and drafting and implementing immigration compliance policies. We recommend an I-9 audit be conducted or overseen by an immigration compliance attorney. Recently, ICE discussed the many difficulties of a company performing a self-audit and the proper correction of errors on the I-9 form. There are acceptable and unacceptable methods for making these corrections. Mistakes in self-audits have resulted in fines for companies. If unacceptable methods are used, it will result in additional penalties for those companies.
A common problem is the company representative, who is conducting the self-audit, may also be the individual who filled out the company’s portion of the I-9 form. It is just human nature for one to have a more difficult time finding their own mistakes versus a second set of eyes when reviewing the I-9 forms for accuracy. Additionally, the individual may not be trained on how to properly correct I-9 errors.