After 40 years, the process that businesses must use to verify employment—Form I-9—needs a complete makeover.
Congress created the I-9 system as part of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. It represented a trade-off: It legalized a large portion of our country’s undocumented workforce but created new immigration compliance burdens for employers.
The law aims to deter unlawful migration by making it harder for unauthorized workers to find jobs. It also requires employers to participate in the immigration verification process, imposing burdens and monetary and criminal penalties on those who didn’t comply. Effectively, it deputizes employers as the front-line enforcers of US immigration law.
But the I-9 process had unintended consequences: It did little to deter unlawful employment; it gave unscrupulous employers more leverage over workers, and the process itself often burdens workers and businesses.
It’s time for an overhaul.
Many employers, particularly in low-wage immigrant-dense industries, don’t comply with IRCA’s mandates.
In the law’s earliest years, compliance was dismal—a 1988 GAO survey—found roughly half of employers who were aware of IRCA hadn’t completed all required I-9s. More recently, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that 61% of employers were out of compliance.
Perhaps more insidious is that many employers weaponize the power granted to them by IRCA, which gives bad employers leverage over...
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