Seperating I9 info from personnel files

Paul in Cannon Beach · May 2007

For years we have dutifully seperated I-9 information from the employee's personnel file. I find this to be aggravating and generally unnecessary.

I can't come up with a good reason to continue this practice.

What am I missing?

NeedCoffee · May 2007

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 05-15-07 AT 01:23PM (CST)[/font][br][br]Aggravating, yes. Unnecessary, depends on your tolerance for people looking through your personnel files. Many government agencies are authorized to inspect your I-9s if they visit your work location. If you have them in your personnel files, the government gets to go through your personnel files. Anything they find there can raise additional questions or issues. If your I-9s are separate, you have the ability to hand the inspecting agent one file folder with all your I-9 forms. No additional problems can arise from that if you have completed all your I-9s as required .

Irie · May 2007

Perhaps for the same reason a government contractor doesn't keep the Employee Data Records with an application.

There is information on the I-9's that could be used to discriminate, e. g. the block that asks whether the employee is a citizen, lawful permanent resident alien, or an alien authorized to work until _____.

An employer could look at the answer to the above questions and if the employee is not a citizen an adverse action could possibly be taken against the employee by the employer that would discriminate based on national origin.

Paul in Cannon Beach · May 2007

Needcoffee, that is a great answer.

I think the risk is very small still but your example makes as much sense as anything I have heard.

njjel · May 2007

I keep ours separate for the same reason. Why give any agency access to ALL of your files and perhaps have them find errors (we would hope not) in another area?

System · May 2007

Yes, these are the two main reasons that Forms I-9 should be kept separate from the personnel file. In addition to concerns about the INS finding other problems (even if the risk is small), if you have to turn over all your personnel files at the time of an INS audit, you may be giving the INS confidential or sensitive business information to which the INS would not otherwise be privy. Or, if you're handing over copies, it's much easier to just copy a file of I-9s than have to go through each personnel file to separate out the I-9s in the limited amount of time the INS gives you.

In addition, Forms I-9 not only contain information regarding an employee's employment status and national origin, but also their age. As we all know, it's a lot easier to defend against claims of discrimination if you can demonstrate that essentially no one had access to this info other than the person who collected and filed the I-9.

System · May 2007

From experience, I can tell you that years ago we had an INS audit. We were requested to pull I-9s for the previous 3 years - we had at least 1000 employees during the three year period. This was very time consuming as many of the employees for that time period were no longer working for us, plus, we had those terminated records/files off site. After the audit, it was actually INS who strongly recommended we keep the I-9s separated from the employee files. Now we bundle and file I-9s per year and it's so much easier to purge after the record keeping requirement is satisfied on terminated employees.

HR Texas · May 2007

The answer that need coffee gave you is the right answer. Don't allow the government to inspect everything....

Seperating I9 info from personnel files

Comments