CareerPlug cannot offer legal counsel. To ensure you’re operating in compliance with federal regulations, we recommend you consult your employment attorney.
Completing the Federal Form I9
The Form I-9 has both an employee portion and a manager portion. The employee fills out their information first within CareerPlug and submits the form.
Next, a manager reviews the employee's information, fills out information about an employee's documents, fills out company information, and signs and completes the form.
According to federal law, the employer filling out the manager part of the Form I-9 must view the employee's actual documents.
Here is a list of accepted documents for the Form I-9: http://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/acceptable-documents
More information: Form I-9 Compliance
Required Fields
CareerPlug created our Form I-9 to guide users to fill out the required fields. Some fields are optional. If a non-required field is not filled out, CareerPlug will automatically enter N/A in that space after the form is submitted, as required by federal law.
From the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website: https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/questions-and-answers
Employees must complete every applicable field in Section 1 of the Form I-9 with the exception of the fields requesting the employees’ telephone number, e-mail address, and Social Security number. However, an employee must enter his or her Social Security number if the employer participates in E-Verify.
Follow the Form I-9 instructions when determining if a field can be blank or if N/A is required. The instructions state when an employee may use N/A or must use N/A. Required fields must be completed with either the information requested or N/A.
Here is more information about filling out section 1 of the I-9 and about completing section 2.
Note: If applicable, an employee's Alien Registration Number/USCIS Number (which is found on their Permanent Resident Card/Green Card) must be entered with an "A" preceding the number to ensure it is formatted correctly. For example, if the number on their card is 856-490-112, it needs to be entered as "A856490112" in the Alien Number field in CareerPlug.
Editing the Federal Form I-9
Some CareerPlug-created forms (like the Federal W-4), can not be edited. However, the Form I-9 has an Edit link next to it. Rather than editing the form, when you click the Edit link next to the Form I-9, you may only edit 1) whether you require documentation of identification to be uploaded and electronically stored with the form I-9 and 2) whether the employee or their manager is responsible for uploading those documents.
Note: Scans of an employee's Form I-9 documents are not required by the federal government. Rather, this is an option that an employer can require.
We strongly recommend making the manager responsible for uploading these documents since managers are required to see a physical copy of the employee's Form I-9 documents. In addition, please be aware that whether or not you choose to require a scan of an employee's Form I-9 documents, you must require the same for all employees.
When you require managers to upload Form I-9 documents, a manager must upload these documents at the time that they fill out their portion of an employee's Form I-9. Thus, we recommend managers not attempt to fill out the Form I-9 until they have digital copies of an employee's Form I-9 documents.