Episode 102: Immigration Compliance: Stop Sweating Your I-9s!

Tiana: This is something that all employers have to comply with. So remember, all of you need to be having I-9 filled out for all of your employees. Now, E-Verify on the other hand, this is an Internet based system. So it’s software. Basically, you get a log in to it. It’s free to enroll. But what that system does is it compares the information from the I-9 that you have this employee complete to actual government records that are available.

Voiceover: You’re about to listen to an episode of What the Hell Just Happened. Join Paul Edwards and his guests as they discuss interesting HR topics and solve some of our listeners’ submitted questions.

Paul: And occasionally I’ll go off topic to talk about whatever I want. Think barbecue, space exploration, growing your business. The things that interest all of us. In today’s podcast, I’m going to well, I’m going to bring an expert in. I’ve reached out to CEDR and I’ve asked for Tiana Stark to join me. Tiana works in our Solution Center. Tiana also works in our, with our compliance, with our timekeeping. She’s been with us for a very long time. But Tiana used to be a, part of her job working for health care provider for pediatric services was she was directly involved in the I-9 process and working with workers who were going to come in as legal immigrants to work for that particular business. We’re going to touch on what you have to do to clean this up. If you haven’t been collecting I-9 let’s kind of explain a little bit of the history and we’ll give you guys a bunch of resources that you can go to. So, you know, forgive me, today is a is a lot more about teaching than it is about just talking. You know, that’s what today’s podcast is about. We’re going to talk about I-9, immigration, a little history lesson, and we’re going to demystify how to correct this if you haven’t been doing it right. All right. Against my better judgment, I’ve decided to do a damn podcast on immigration and people coming into the United States to work. I got to tell the listeners out there, I really didn’t want to do this podcast because it’s just a very frustrating subject for me. But hopefully today is going to be maybe entertaining. I’m not sure if it’s going to be entertaining. It is going to lean a lot more towards information and being informative and giving you some direction. It also coincides with an article that we wrote over at CEDR HR Solutions, where we gave our members some guidance about what to do when it comes to verifying people’s employment. You know, I’ve been following immigration for a long time. For those listeners out there who rightfully believe I’m probably 35, 36 years old, that’s not true. Spoiler alert. I’m in my sixties. I’ve been paying attention to politics ever since politics impacted me as a young man when I could have been drafted and right as I was turning 18 years old, we were still having to register for the draft, but we couldn’t be drafted. They had ended the draft. And then finally I think maybe, I don’t know, maybe that that requirement had gone away. But that’s what got me involved in politics because, you know, basically when it impacts you, you start to pay attention to it. And so that’s that’s what got me going. So I’ve been paying attention to lots of things that have to do with politics, and immigration is one of them.

And I live on the border, by the way, so I’m within the hundred miles of the border, which is important because I can be stopped and asked for my ID because I’m within 100 miles of that border and I have to give that ID up to the, to any officer or Border Patrol that would be asking for it. And looking at immigration. And when we think about the history of the United States and particularly with Mexico, and we’re going to get into other kinds of immigration, I have Tiana Stark with me today. Tiana, say hi.

Tiana: Hi!

Paul: And that was Tiana saying hi. Tiana actually had to do this. This was part of her job. Tiana, what did you have to do? Tell everybody, the listeners who you worked for and what you had to do?

Tiana: Absolutely. Yeah. So I worked for a really large pediatric hospital. And I was the immigration coordinator there. So my job was to help those employees that were applying for work related visas to come work at that hospital and coordinate that process with them between the employee and our immigration attorneys too that were actually putting together the cases.

Paul: Okay, great. And you told me a pretty cool story. I’d love to just let’s just share that your story as well. So you were there and someone new comes in?

Tiana: Yeah. Yeah. So I am there doing my job. There’s a new person in our department who was curious about my role, and they ended up asking me, what is the purpose of us helping these individuals obtain visas to come work for us when we might be displacing U.S. citizens?

Paul: That’s a very common thing. Why are we hiring people from elsewhere when we have people here who need jobs?

Tiana: Yeah, my answer to her was that the U.S. immigration system already has a checks and balances in place to ensure that a U.S. worker is not displaced by a foreign national who’s coming in for that job. And I could go into long ad nauseum details about what that process looks like. But I mean, it even comes down to posting the job description in a public viewable place, keeping that up for 30 days to see what U.S. citizens apply for it, if they’re qualified or not. You have to go through that vetting process before you can even go to the next step of the visa process. So so there’s a lot of hoops to jump through the whole system is designed to make sure that a fair wage is paid to those individuals that would match that of other U.S. citizens, really with the intention of employers don’t have a way to sponsor somebody for an employment based visa and say, ‘Because this person is from another country, I’ll pay them $20,000 to be a pediatric cardiologist versus, you know, the going $200,000.’

Paul: So they’re trying to to remove any incentive that the employer might have for replacing U.S. workers, qualified U.S. workers into the job to the point where they’ve got to go look and prove that they’ve gone looking for U.S. workers to fill the job. A very good example, a very good answer is, well, we’re not displacing workers. We’ve tried. We can’t fill these positions. And now we’re reaching out to bring people in from the outside that have the necessary skills. I think in a pediatric hospital, making sure that you’re fully staffed with nurses and doctors and clinicians to do the work that needs to be done is a is a key thing. I mean, it’s a good use of immigration.

Tiana: Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, there are some positions that are so specific, you know, that it can be really hard to fill by, you know, just domestic talent that we have. You know, there might be positions combining. You know, you have to have experience and robotics expertise, but also have a nursing background and, you know.

Paul: And have worked with kids in the past.

Tiana: Yeah.

Paul: So which is a whole nother level. So. Okay, So that explains one interesting level there.

Tiania: Yeah, one small facet.

Paul: I found it really fascinating looking at the history of immigration in the United States. So all through the 1900s, 1940, all the way up until really 19 mid-to mid eighties, what typically occurred in between the U.S. and Mexican workers is that Mexican workers would come to the United States. They would do work during the seasons in different areas and along the United States, not just in California and Arizona, but they would spread out all over the United States. And then as it would make sense, they would go back home. They would take their earnings and they you know, they pack up their kids and they head back down across the border for the winter and they’d go back to their town. What changed that was that a long, right a beginning of the early eighties, mid eighties, immigration became a political football. It really got politicized in a way where by we changed the way that people flowed back and forth across the border. I’m not saying that that wasn’t a good thing or a bad thing, but I can tell you what occurred was, was that it was no longer easy for someone to come across work and then go back. It became very difficult for them to go back and forth. So that’s part of the process that was there. They didn’t just come up here and stay for six months. They came up here and worked for a month or a month and a half. They’d have a week week in something off. They’d go back down to their family and they would flow back and forth. And what occurred was they weren’t able to flow back and forth. And the reason why they aren’t able to flow back and forth is that I don’t think people in the United States realize just how difficult it is as a nonprofessional applying for one of those sponsored jobs that we were just talking about. If you’re just a smart, hardworking person who might want to come to the United States, put your nose down, work hard, fill some of the positions that need to be filled here in the United States and work your way up and hopefully one day get your, you know, get, you know, get beyond a green card and get to citizenship.

The number of slots for that are minuscule. They number in the few thousands. When you look at the larger picture of which we only allow about 150,000 applications for immigrants to come in the first place You know, I just kind of want to share that with everybody. We had kind of a good thing going there. And what would have made sense is if we had recognized specifically that that specific thing that was going on and that really needed to continue to go on and to have facilitate a methodology for someone to get a temporary visa to work into this country and to go back and forth. But did the politicians do that? No, that’s not what they did. And so what we have is the mess we have today. So we did a forgiveness program. It was quite difficult to get into. They made it very, very difficult. I would not call it successful. And then what we were supposed to do is we were supposed to reset our system and at that point it needed to be clear if you were here and you got caught, you were going to get in a lot of trouble. And the message was also supposed to be, ‘Don’t come across these borders illegally.’ We’re going to we’ll do something about you know, because we’ll do something about it. Again, the problem is, is that none of the hard work that needed to be done after that reset ever got done, because we went back and forth between two parties and it always became some kind of a political football. So where we are today, where there’s some hysteria and some, you know, not so great things going on. You know, frankly, it is disturbing to us to realize that we have 10 million people in the country who we don’t know who they are. We don’t know how they got here. We don’t know a lot about these folks. On that side of it, I think everybody who comes across should have a way to come across that’s legal. That’s just me. Now that we’ve gotten my opinion out of the way, as if it matters. Tiana, let’s you and I just kind of answer some questions for everybody. We’ve got the list. We’ve got the blog out there. Look and just for everybody who’s listening, the link to our article to the blog over at CEDR is in our show notes, and there are more things in our article. Like ways, links that you can go to to get training if you want to go through some training on on how to fill out I-9s and stuff. I think another piece of information, not everybody out there has is that when we look at immigration and who’s come in, we basically have two kinds. We have they cross not at a border crossing, they’ve crossed someplace else or they’ve snuck through a border crossing and managed to get through that check or something. That’s one type of immigration that’s occurring, one type of illegal immigration that’s occurring. The other type is visa overstays. And these are people who had a visa. They had a reason to come in. So it could be a visa to come visit the United States. It’s just coming in for six weeks and they’re going to go see Niagara Falls and Grand Canyon or whatever. Could be to come visit family, could be any number of things. These visas would be mostly non work visas, and then they would stay. They would overstay their visa. And that is about 50% of everybody who’s here. So just want everybody to know if what you’re thinking is that, you know, 90% of the immigration of the illegal immigration is people running across that border. It’s not true historically, and it remains true that many of, half of the people who are here are overstays. And they flew into this country on some kind of illegal visa. So, you know, I think that’s important. The next thing is, is that we want to look at asylum. That’s a third reason why someone comes to our border. And it’s one of the big sticking points right now. You know, in order to seek asylum, it’s pretty difficult. It has been difficult. It’s been difficult since the Obama administration, when they first started clamping down on it. When Trump came into office, they continued clamping down on it. And then, you know, we saw it through Biden and now we’re seeing what we’re seeing at the borders now. You basically have to prove that you are not just discriminated against, but that because of your race or your religion, your nationality, or, you know, some kind of membership in a this one’s a little squishier, but some kind of membership in a social group. So it could be political is what I’m trying to say here. If you are or outright for your political opinions, you are being persecuted in your in your home area. You can come to the United States and seek asylum. It’s very difficult to prove these things. And it can take anywhere from 3 to 5 years to process an asylum seeker and give them true asylum status. So that’s another kind of folks who are trying to, you know, get away from the bad stuff that’s happening to them in their own state. So, Tiana, I’m going to ask and we’re going to and you’re going to answer some questions. Okay?

Tiana: That sounds great.

Paul: Let’s just look at the basic requirements. So that we kind of unpack that for everybody. So can you tell the listeners what our I-9 obligations are? And if you want to, you can expand on it. You know, why? Why are they even in place?

Tiana: Yeah, yeah. And I can even talk a little bit about what the I-9 is, you know. So and, now we’re kind of getting into the realm of how immigration impacts you as an employer, you know, and where this comes into play. So all employers need to have as part of their onboarding process, when you hire a new employee, you need to have them fill out an I-9 form. So the I-9 form is administered by USCIS. So this is the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. This is that form, most of you are probably familiar with this. If you have had any interaction with your hiring process at your businesses. But the employee fills out section one of this form to verify what classification they’re in. Are they a U.S. citizen or are they a permanent resident?

Paul: Green card holder? Whatever. Yeah.

Tiana: Yes. Section two of the form is what the employer completes because that employee is going to have to provide documentation for you to prove both their authorization to work in the U.S. and also their identity. Federal law requires all employers in the U.S. to verify that employees are legally authorized to work. And so that’s what this form accomplishes, is basically to be able to prove that somebody has this authorization. To give a little history on the form to you. This is something that started back in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act.

Paul: Which is when we, right after that is when we ran the forgiveness program. The people that were in it, that was part of that.

Tiana: So it kind of coincided, Yeah, okay, I’m getting a history lesson as we talk about this too. But it was later on in 2003 where there were three new agencies basically that formed under the Department of Homeland Security. So that’s where we got USCIS that I just talked about a second ago, CBP, which is Customs and Border Patrol and then ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Again, it’s USCIS who administers this I-9 requirement. They have all the rules posted for this. USCIS is actually, just for the listeners, that’s where individuals are going through to apply for visas too. So that’s who processes that. It’s actually ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement that enforces the penalties of noncompliance.

Paul: Okay. So they’re the strong arm of the law.

Tiana: Exactly.

Paul: What I get from this is we are all obligated to only hire people who are legally designated to be able to work in the United States. That’s I mean, that’s just the rule. And we all have to have the I-9s and we all have to ask everybody for proof. We’re not going to get into that minutia. There’s a bunch of different things that you could ask for in order to meet those requirements.

Tiana: Yeah.

Paul: And we have to keep a record that we did that. And that applies whether you have one employee or 500 employees. You have to, these are records that you need to keep on board.

Tiana: Exactly. Yeah. And it’s a record that you should keep on file for your employee throughout the entire duration of their employment. This is something that is always on file while they’re there. And then you have to keep that form for at least three years from the date you hired them. So maybe you hired somebody for just a month. You’re looking at three years from that time or keep it for at least one year from the time they’ve separated employment, whichever is longer.

Paul: This doesn’t apply, there’s this requirement that you verify doesn’t apply to independent contractors.

Tiana: As long as they’re properly classified.

Paul: I knew, I knew you were gonna…Tiana comes out of the Solutions Center over at CEDR. So you know that that’s something that she was going to throw out. Uou don’t have to check people who aren’t physically working in the United States. So if you’re one of those practices that’s outsourced, your incoming calls or your insurance or stuff like that, this is not part of your you know, what we’re talking about is not part of any obligation that you have with regards to I-9.

And then there are some other instances that are kind of outliers. And I just don’t think they’re going to apply to anybody who’s listening to the podcast. We don’t have to go into that. Tiana, everybody’s heard of it. E-Verify, can you give us a little bit of information on that system and who has access to it?

Tiana: Yeah, E-Verify is tied in to this I-9 process. The purposes of these systems are very similar. So I want to clarify first. So I-9 is an actual paper form that you’re giving to somebody. This is something that all employers have to comply with. So remember, all of you need to be having I-9 filled out for all of your employees. Now, E-Verify, on the other hand, this is an Internet based system, so it’s software. Basically, you get a log in to it, it’s free to enroll. But what that system does is it compares the information from the I-9 that you have this employee complete to actual government records that are available. Yeah, through the DHS, through SSA. It’s kind of crossing against that just to confirm that that employee is authorized to work in the U.S. One thing about E-Verify, it is not required for all employers. It is required for all federal contractors in the U.S. to use E-Verify. But then that requirement to use E-Verify, that’s actually going to be very specific, based on the state that you’re in. Even the municipality. So there are some of you listening out there that might be in a state that does require E-Verify.

Paul: I have a list, so disclaim this. As of the time I recorded this Wednesday, February 12th, 2025, at 1:29 in the afternoon. Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Utah. All of your state’s legislators said, ‘Hey, this is something that we should do.’ I will share something with you Tiana. You know, when this came down, the pipe in Arizona was one of the first to do it, I think require all employers to do it. The E-Verify site online was down 96% of the time. You couldn’t get in and you couldn’t figure out how it worked. You couldn’t you couldn’t get it to work at all. That is no longer the case, now. That’s not the case. It runs well. Everybody can get into it pretty easily, but that’s part of it was I mean, we couldn’t run verifications forever. So we did what we tell everybody, HR lesson. We documented our efforts with screenshots and notes. And after we had tried five times to get into the system to E-Verify, someone we just stopped and said, we verified they had the right paperwork, they gave us everything they needed and we set it aside. Now, of course, we never got audited. I don’t know if that woul work or not. Power of taking notes. What are some of the mechanisms? We’ll get into the nitty gritty just a little bit here. What are some of the mechanisms for verifying?

Tiana: Like I mentioned earlier on the employee’s very first day of work, they need to fill out section one and actually not need to. They are required. So keep in mind with the I-9, very specific time frames required in terms of when this form is completed. As part of your hiring process, could be a good idea to tell a new hire, ‘Be ready to fill out section one of this form on your first day of work, we’re going to ask you to bring acceptable documents. Here’s the list of the possible combination of documents or single documents you could provide.’ So day one employee fills out section one. They’re actually bringing their physical documents to work for the employer to verify.

Paul: To witness.

Tiana: Yeah. To witness and look at. And these are not photocopies.

Paul: You can’t use a photocopy of a document you have. They have to present the original document.

Tiana: That’s right.

Paul: Also, correct me if I’m wrong, Tiana, you don’t need to make copies and keep records of your verification. All you’re saying is, is I have collected these, they’ve given me the information and I have witnessed that they have that information. You’re not required to make a copy of their driver’s license or the birth certificate or any of those things. And keep track of them.

Tiana: That’s right. But as long as the employer picks a consistent precedence and sticks with that. Right. So if you have been collecting copies of documents, you just need to continue that practice. Good. But if you have not been collecting copies, you don’t need to you don’t need to start. Just note that is different for E-Verify users. So E-Verify users do need to collect copies.

Paul: So they do have to keep the copy. So if you’re in one of those states where you’re required to keep the E-Verify, you’re saying you should also make copies of whatever documents and then you just keep them in there in their file?

Tiana: Yeah.

Paul: What happens if I hire an undocumented worker?

Tiana: It’s pretty steep. So if you were found to have hired an undocumented worker, could be $716 at the lowest for your first offense, up to $5,724. And that is per unauthorized worker that you have there. Second offense, you’re starting at the $5,700 plus threshold, upwards of $14,000. Third offense, that could take you up to $28,000 for one offense.

Paul: So they’ve yeah, they’ve designed in some kind of automatic penalties. It would be painful even at the lowest. Even at the lowest level. Let’s talk about people who are listening to our voices right now who have not been doing this. So they’ve been sitting on a butt-pucker. That’s an HR term, by the way. They’ve been sitting in a butt-pucker now for about 20 minutes. They’re sweating. They’re like, ‘I didn’t know I needed to do the I-9, I’ve heard about it, but I mean, I started my practice and I hired my wife and her sister. And then three years later, they all got sick of me and I had to replace them. And so they got people to work for me instead of them. And now I’ve turned around and I have eight people working for me. And, you know, if they’ve got a decent smile and can answer the phone and do their job, I just hire them.’ That’s what I’m telling you. There’s a significant number of people listening right now, what do these people do?

Tiana: Okay. Well, I would take a deep breath first. Okay. We’ve taken our deep breath. Yeah. You know what I would recommend first, Paul?

Paul: Bourbon. No? A diet coke.

Tiana: I mean, to each their own.

Paul: Go get your dog. Get Archie and pet him.

Tiana: Find your emotional support animal.

Paul: While Tiana tells you what to do.

Tiana: That’s what I would do, frankly. No, but what I was going to say is watch an I-9 webinar. And I think it’s really important for somebody to familiarize themselves with the requirements of the I-9 form. Just wrap your head around it, you know, depending on what kind of learner you are like. I’m more of a visual learner. There are really great webinars available out there. Best place to go is USCIS.gov, so go to their website. They have I-9 webinars available. I think it would be good to familiarize yourself with that. Read our blog too. We have just released a blog that we’ll have available. This has links to the USCIS website. It has more detailed tips about correcting I-9’s getting on top of that process. But you really want to now start building into your onboarding process, collecting I-9 for future hires.

Paul: So get it right going forward,

Tiana: Get it right going forward regardless of what you’ve done in the past. So that’s going to be step number one.

Paul: Okay. If your state requires E-Verify and you haven’t been doing it, what’s guidance here?

Tiana: So for the E-Verify situation, if the employer’s account was inactive due to deliberate non use while hiring numerous employees over several years, so you haven’t been doing this, you should not go back and create E-Verify cases for employees that were hired during the time that this was an active.

Paul: When you weren’t doing your job.

Tiana: When you weren’t doing it. Yes. So you’re just going to start doing E-Verify for people being hired going forward. But if you are an employer who is actively using E-Verify and then you just forgot to create a case for somebody, then that needs to happen in E-Verify. By the third business day after the employees first day of work, or if you haven’t complied with that, immediately create a case for that employee as soon as you find out. So it’s kind of a difference between are you using it or, you know.

Paul: Or are you not using it. Okay, I’m confused here. Okay. So let me just give you a real scenario. I’ve got 18 people working for me now that have been with me for five years, and I didn’t know about I-9. I just didn’t know and I didn’t do anything. I didn’t create an account. I didn’t do anything. I think what you’re saying is, is and remember everybody we’re talking about the state where the E-Verify requirement is there from the state. You’re supposed to use E-Verify.Tiana you’re saying don’t go to E-Verify, create these things and try to backdate them and say they’ve been working for me for five years.

Tiana: Right.

Paul: But what do you do? Do you just check at that point? Like right now I’ve got these 18 people I go in and I say, ‘Hey, everybody, I forgot to do this. I have to verify all of you guys I-9 information.’ Is that what I do?

Tiana: I think we should separate E-Verify requirements from the I-9. So I was just talking about E-Verify in that situation. Remember, too, you know, like we said earlier, not everybody has to use E-Verify. So you just have to check on your state to see if you’re one of those people. Going to the I-9 side. So this is that paper document that you do have to collect. That’s going to be a different process for that. So if you discover that you haven’t filled out an I-9 for somebody and they’ve been working for you, you know, five years, six years whatever, that’s going to be different. You are going to need to fill out an I-9 for that person.

Paul: So regardless whether you’re required to do E-Verify or you’re not required to, if you have not done the I-9 process and you’re just hearing about it for the first time right now, you should probably go in and do your I-9 for all those people that you missed.

Tiana: Yeah, it’s going to be a lot more effective to go to USCIS website or we have a great link available on our blog to audit guidance from ICE. Look at those documents rather than trying to go in and correct I-9 right now just by listening to this because the steps are very specific in terms of what you have to do,

Paul: But there is a way to do it, everybody.

Tiana: There is a way to do it. And that, so the bottom line is you need to audit your I-9 records, see what you don’t have for people that work for you. Look at those forms. Were mistakes made and then you’re working on correcting that. Another great resource for people who have this available to them is to enlist the help of an immigration attorney because they can help you with an audit of I-9s.

Paul: I have a, I have a feeling that getting your hands on an immigration attorney right now has to be one of the most difficult things you do. As they are volunteering and working everywhere. No matter what, use the current version of the I-9. If you haven’t been collecting and collect that information, you’re not using E-Verify but you are not getting… They can’t provide you the documentation that you’re looking for. You say, ‘Hey everybody, I got to clean up this I-9 thing. I need you guys. Here’s the I-9 form. fill out the stuff on the top and then give me the paperwork that we’ve given you a list of.’ And they come in and they’ve got a copy of the diversity figure, or they can’t produce the proper documentation. What do you do? And this is even on day three, if you just hired them and they still can’t by day three, they still can’t produce the right documentation, what do you do?

Tiana: So you cannot knowingly hire somebody that you do not know is not authorized to work. So if they haven’t provided acceptable documents, they can’t continue working for you. And that really is the bottom line. I think a lot of times in those situations it can help to ask for the required documents. As soon as you are having the person fill out section one to give yourself a little time, because section two has to be completed within three business days of hire. So if you hire somebody on a Monday, you, the employer, have to look at their documents, fill out section two by Thursday. You know, if you still have a little time, I think it always helps to give the employee that list of what acceptable documents are. You know, ‘Please look this over you can give us one item from list A or a combination, one from B, one from C.’ If they’re still not able to produce that, your safest bet is to terminate employment. But you could let that person know. You know, ‘If you are able to gather documents and contact us within 15 days, you know, we can hold this position. We won’t refill it. We could hire you back.’ I’ve worked with employers that did that. They really wanted this person and the employee just had a hard time getting their hands on, you know, original.

Paul: Well, think about it during COVID times, we couldn’t get background checks to come back in under 90 days. And that’s because the courts in the counties could not respond. We still have that going on. It’s starting to get better. We can get stuff back from our different state and federal government entities, which also if you’re listening out there, this is why you want people working in government is because they make things like this run. I think the lesson here is just you got to do this. Hopefully we’ve given you enough explanation. You’ll go to the blog, go find the blog at CEDR’s website. CEDRsolutions.com, go find the blog, go through it. There’ll be some more resources in our notes. Also be resources at the blog article where you can go take a course at government’s website. The immigration website and again like Tiana and I said, we haven’t given you enough information to know what you have to do to correct it exactly, but it’s there and it’s readily available for you. So if you haven’t been doing I-9 and you need to correct it, go watch the course and listen. Figure out what category you fall in and then just follow the directions because you’re not going to get in any trouble. You’re not. As long as you go and do the right thing, you’re just not going to get any trouble. So there’s no reason not to do it.

Tiana: Absolutely. You know, we’re going over these steps with you and I-9 compliance because we are at a time right now where audits of I-9 are becoming more prevalent. So so that’s why I think, Paul, we want everybody to to be aware of this obligation just to prepare yourself.

Paul: I think that, I think you should as an employer prepare to be ICE’d at some point, which is like swatting someone, which is someone’s going to use a national hotline who’s mad at you, who used to work for you and is going to call it in and you’re going to end up with immigration, least contacting you and asking you for your paperwork and stuff. And I’ve seen references to this ICE’ing thing over and over again. So.

Tiana: Wow.

Paul: Yeah. One more thing for small business to be joyful about. All right. Every single episode, I answer a question from one of our listeners.

Tiana: All right, Paul, it is time for this week’s listener question. Are you ready?

Paul: I’m ready.

Tiana: We want to switch our team members to salary. Can you walk me through a few things I should consider before taking the plunge?

Paul: I love this question. You can switch your team members to salary. I don’t know why you want to do that, so I’d have some questions. My first one would be why do you want to do salary? And if you answered me with the following, which is what I think you’re going to answer me with, if I asked you the question, the follow up question. You would say, ‘I’ve been told it’s just easier that way. We can just pay everybody the same and we don’t have to track hours and we don’t have to pay overtime.’ I think that’s what you would tell me. My answer to that second question is you can’t do that. Well, you can, but if you do it, it’ll be illegal. There’s two kinds of salaries. There’s salary exempt, and there’s salary nonexempt. I’m going to keep it very simple. An exempt salaried employee meets a certain set of criteria both in the base amount of pay that they make. That’s just one of the criteria. But the second part of the criteria has to do with their professional training, their job title, what their responsibilities are. So if you’re out there listening to me and one of the many medical practices we work with, I’m just going to make it clear to you, your office manager who manages spends more than half of their time managing other employees, typically two or more employees, and your practice qualifies for the exemption. In other words, she could pay be paid a fixed salary. There’s some rules around that, too. But you could pay a fixed salary and you would not have to track her hours, nor would she be do any overtime if she worked more than 40 hours in a week. I want to make it clear to you that likely no one else in your practice other than some clinical providers, but none of the other workers in your practice, your accountant, your front desk person, your insurance person, your marketing person. And I’m running out of fingers, but all of those people cannot be paid as a salary exempt employee. They can be paid as a salary employee, of which if they work more than 40 hours in a week, you would then have to pay them overtime. So if what you’re trying to do is simplify things because some people are working 44 hours and some people are working 38, some people are working 51 week and some people who are working 36. And what you’d like to do is just pay everybody the same amount every single week. That will not work. That violates the wage and hour laws. That’s the guidance that I have for you. The only way, the only time that I think that salary works really well, I’m going to qualify this was something after I tell you, this part is that if you’re just open four days a week and your employees always work between 32 and 38 hours a week and you really don’t care that you’re going to pay them for 40 hours or 38 hours, you’re not worried about it. If they worked 34 hours that week because you didn’t have extra patients or whatever, then this salary nonexempt thing is for you. It makes it very, very simple to do it. But still, if you load everybody up on a plane, take them out to Vegas and you guys go to the big conference and you’re attending it for work and for play and for work, those hours would count that week and that week you likely would run into overtime and you’d have to pay them their salary. Plus their over time. I hope that helped. And you know, for the final segment, if I ruled the world here, my thoughts. This comes back around to a larger podcast that I’m going to do about how many businesses are basically committing wage violations by having their customers work for them while they’re there, talking to you grocery stores. So here’s my here’s my thoughts. If I if I ruled world if a grocery store can have someone arrested and charged for incorrectly checking out their items, then I think consumers should be able to have the store manager arrested and the store fined for an incorrect charge for a product. So when you show up and you scan it and they said it was on sale and the scanner doesn’t show that it’s on sale, I think someone needs to go to jail. I mean, that is literally if I don’t correct it and I don’t watch it and take accountability for I just pay more money for something that’s supposed to be on sale. So in that instance, I think you scan it, you just call the police, they come, the store manager gets arrested and some kind of fine gets levied against this. I mean, it just seems like the right thing to do.

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