5 Common Form I-9 Challenges and How Retailers Can Navigate Them

By: Joy Henry, Executive Vice President, Americas

Retailers operate in fast-paced, high-turnover environments were hiring never stops. With new employees constantly coming on board, it’s critical for employers to have a clear and repeatable I-9 process. Without it, small mistakes can quickly add up – potentially resulting in costly fines, audit risk, and administrative burden.

Fines for incorrectly completing Form I-9 range from $288 to $2,861 for a first offense, with scaling penalties for repeat violations. Some factors, such as business size, good faith, seriousness, history and involvement of unauthorized workers, can either aggravate or mitigate the fine. In addition, errors are cumulative, with a high error rate leading to more substantive penalties, which could entail million dollars in fees for large employers. With ICE restarting worksite immigration raids in 2025 and DHS increasing the frequency of its audits, employers should prioritize compliance to avoid incurring serious penalties.

Let’s outline several common I-9 challenges, including risks of discrimination, data entry errors, late penalties, and compliance audits, as well as how outsourcing your I-9 management process can help you avoid them.

Common mistakes and challenges of retail I-9 management

Managing Form I-9 is a complex process, especially in retail, where high turnover and frequent onboarding require employers to use a process that is both repeatable and easy to execute. However, compliance requirements are not always intuitive, and even experienced HR teams can make avoidable errors.
Here are a few of the most common Form I‑9 errors we see retail companies face when manually managing the I-9 process:

1. Discriminatory practices. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) requires employers not to discriminate based on national origin, citizenship, or immigration status. While this might seem straightforward in theory, some apparently innocuous practices, such as asking employees to provide specific pieces of ID, like the driver’s license or SSN, can trigger an investigation. HR managers might think they are being thorough when they reject a reasonably
   genuine-looking document to ask for another they feel is more reliable, but this can also expose their companies to suspicions of discrimination.
2. Inappropriate documentation. While HR managers can be overly stringent when it comes to IDs, it’s also possible to err in the opposite direction by accepting inappropriate or expired documents. In addition to its strict ID criteria, USCIS expects employers to retain Form I-9 for a certain period of time after hiring, which adds an additional layer of complexity to the process when handled manually by in-house HR managers. What makes this requirement particularly fraught is that only acceptable documents that are used to complete the Form I-9 process should be kept, while extemporaneous documents should not be retained.
3. Incomplete and inaccurate information. Both the employee and the employer have to sign and date specific fields on Form I-9. When scanning over the form to review it, it’s all too easy for a busy manager to miss a critical piece of information, such as missing dates or signatures or incorrectly filled or unfilled fields. The current instructions for filling out Form I-9 are 8 pages long, just to complete a single page, adding to the confusion.
4. Untimely completion. I-9 forms that are not completed and retained on time, in compliance with regulations, can result in employer penalization. HR managers are on a tight deadline, with complete forms being required three days after an employee’s first day at work. This can be challenging in fast-moving environments like retail, where HR is often swamped with a high volume of applications and round-the-clock schedules can make it hard to follow up with individual employees.
5. Audits. More inspection officers are being added in 2025 to expand US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) investigative and enforcement capabilities. Increased audits raise the chance employers could be forced to pay the costly non-compliance fines.

To avoid these common mistakes and simplify the process, many retailers are outsourcing I-9 management to an external provider. The cost of implementing a third-party I-9 process for retail hiring is easily offset by the time savings and administrative relief it provides employers.

Considerations when choosing an I-9 provider

If you’ve decided to outsource the I-9 management process to an external provider, what should you be looking for in your new partner?

I-9 management is a year-long, always-on process that requires ongoing diligence. A prospective provider should be able to streamline this process, even for large volumes of requests. It’s also important to request a solution demo to confirm that both the employee and staff experiences are intuitive and user-friendly.

First Advantage’s I-9 solution helps retailers navigate the complexities of I-9 management at a large scale. We offer:

• A single provider – Our proprietary owned and operated I-9 and E-Verify service responds faster, without relying on a third-party.
• A modern experience – Our Form I-9 solutions are optimized to use on mobile devices and mobile browsers.
• An integrated solution – Our auto-submission and integrated case management tools streamline the E-Verify process. You can also connect your I-9 program to your HR system with your ATS integration for greater convenience.
• Verifier options – We offer robust verifier options for Form I-9, including our proprietary Virtual I-9 Document Review to easily complete Section 2 and Supplement B.
• Secure storage – Completed forms are retained, along with all other I-9 documentation, in our secure platform, making it easily accessible to employers for audit purposes.

If you’d like to learn more about retail employee I‑9 compliance and E-Verify management, let us know! Our solutions can streamline this complicated process and help you protect yourself from costly errors. Contact our experts today.