What is E-Verify?

Every US employer must complete Form I-9 for every new hire. The employee attests to their work authorisation and presents documents; the employer examines them and records the details. That obligation is universal and has existed since 1986.

E-Verify is a separate, electronic step that takes the data from a completed I-9 and compares it against government records. The I-9 is paperwork you hold; E-Verify is a query you run. Doing one does not satisfy the other, and an employer enrolled in E-Verify still has to complete and retain I-9s.

Federal contractors and subcontractors with contracts containing the FAR E-Verify clause are required to use it. So are employers in states that have mandated it — the list has grown steadily and includes Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah among others, with conditions that vary by employer size.

For everyone else it is voluntary at federal level. Many staffing firms enrol anyway, because clients increasingly require it contractually: if you supply contractors to a federal programme or to a large enterprise with its own compliance standards, E-Verify participation is often a condition of being on the supplier list at all.

Enrolment is effectively company-wide. Once enrolled you must run every new hire at the participating locations — you cannot pick and choose, and screening selectively is itself a violation.

A case is created within three business days of the employee's start date, using the details from their I-9. Most come back Employment Authorized within seconds.

Some return a Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC), meaning the data did not match government records. A TNC is not a finding that the person cannot work — mismatches commonly come from a name change after marriage, a hyphenated surname entered differently, or a records lag. The employer must notify the employee privately, and the employee may contest it and has eight federal working days to resolve it with SSA or DHS.

Critically: you cannot take adverse action while a TNC is being contested. You cannot delay the start date, cut hours, withhold pay or terminate. Doing so is one of the most common and most expensive E-Verify violations there is.

If it is not resolved, the case closes as a Final Nonconfirmation and the employer may terminate without liability under the programme.

A direct employer hires someone and runs one case. A staffing agency onboards contractors continuously, across states with different mandates, for clients with different contractual requirements, and with work authorisation documents that expire mid-assignment.

The compliance risk for agencies is rarely a wrong decision on a single case. It is losing track: a contractor whose authorisation expired in month seven of a twelve-month assignment, a case never created because onboarding was covered by someone standing in for a colleague, an I-9 never completed because the consultant started remotely.

That is an operations problem, and it is solved by tying authorisation tracking to the employee record with expiry alerts rather than keeping it in a spreadsheet somebody has to remember to open.

I-9 paperwork violations alone carry civil penalties per form, adjusted annually. Knowingly employing an unauthorised worker carries substantially higher penalties and, for repeat conduct, criminal exposure. Federal contractors risk debarment.

The practical cost that arrives sooner is commercial: a client audit that finds gaps in your documentation ends supplier relationships quickly, and the staffing industry is small enough that it is remembered.