If you are hiring somebody for your construction company this year, there is now a new and revised Employment Eligibility Verification form (Form I-9) that employers and employees must first fill out.
The new form is required as of Jan. 22 and has two parts, one filled out by the employer, the other by the employee.
The I-9 Form does not require a social security number, but employees must show some form of official identity document such as a valid passport, driver’s license or military ID. For details, check out the link above.
The I-9 Form is mandatory and sometimes confused with the E-Verify system, which is not. But given a new administration in Washington, D.C., looking unfavorably at undocumented workers, you may want to implement E-Verify in your company to stay on the right side of employment law.
E-Verify is an Internet-based system that compares information from your job applicants’ Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification to Department of Homeland Security, Social Security Administration and Department of State records to confirm that they’re authorized to work in the United States.
For more information about E-Verify, visit this page on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Tom Jackson is the executive editor of Equipment World magazine, another Randall-Reilly publication.
