How to Survive an Immigration Audit

 With all of the political pressure from politicians and beaurocracies, Immigration is aggressively cracking down on the laws that prevent employers from knowingly hiring employees who are not legal citizens or aliens of the United States. Immigration is conducting audits all over the country to discover the unlawful hiring of illegal aliens and placing increasingly harsher punishments upon employers who do not pass the Immigration audits. 

If you feel that you might be subject to an Immigration audit, it is imperative that you become proactive now. Raids on businesses all across the United States are conducted every day, and you might be next. Making sure that all of your employees are in order, and that you have no skeletons for Immigration to find, is the first step toward surviving an Immigration audit. 

#1 Perform Your Own I-9 Audit.

Rather than waiting for Immigration to knock on your door, get ready now to make sure everything is in order. Compare your payroll records with all of your I-9 forms and make sure that one exists for all of your employees. All of the forms should be filled out completely and correctly, and it wouldn’t hurt to call in all of your employees individually to go over the paperwork and correct any mistakes. Performing your own audit will ensure that there are no surprises when and if Immigration does an audit. 

#2. Centralize Your I-9 Records.

When paperwork becomes confusing and scattered, mistakes are invariably made. Rather than risking a mistake on an I-9, have two or three employees whose primary job is to fill out the I-9 forms. Train them in each step of the I-9 process, and let them handle all of your new employees. Allowing supervisors who are unfamiliar with the process to complete I-9 forms might result in mistakes slipping through the cracks, giving Immigration the ammunition they need to penalize you and your business. 

#3 Keep Meticulous Files