Abstract:
A method is provided for determining employer compliance in determining employment eligibility requirements in accordance with federal immigration regulations. Compliance alerts and compliance tips are displayed for guiding employers in verifying employment eligibility. Completed employment eligibility forms are automatically audited to analyze whether the employer has accurately completed the employment verification. The completed forms are audited by applying various compliance rules to a completed employment eligibility form, presently a Form I-9, to determine compliance with the applicable regulations. A listing is provided of various errors and additional data required to complete the audited form. The method is preferably administered by a single service provider for multiple employers, to assure that changes in the applicable regulations are regularly incorporated. A central system is provided for managing all of the employment eligibility forms associated with particular employers, to assure continued compliance with federal regulations.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
   This patent application is a continuation application of commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/918,092, filed Jul. 30, 2001 now abandoned, entitled “Method for Complying with Employment Eligibility Verification Requirements,” by Elaine V. Morley and John T. Andersen, which itself claims priority to commonly owned U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/222,117, filed Jul. 28, 2000, entitled “Method for Reviewing Compliance With Employer Eligibility Verification Requirements,” by Elaine V. Morley, both disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety for all purposes. 

   TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
   This invention relates to methods for data entry and verifying that data is correctly entered, and, in particular, to a method for assuring employer compliance with employee employment eligibility verification requirements. 
   BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
   The U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, administers federal statutory requirements and regulations which require that employers verify that any persons hired as employees or to perform services, that its workers are eligible to work in the United States. Presently, to assure that employers adequately verify eligibility to work in the United States, federal regulations require that employers complete a U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Form I-9 document. Completion of the Form I-9 requires that employers inspect various ones of specified documents, which requires that employers review originals of the documents and not reproductions of the documents, to determine the employee&#39;s eligibility to work in the United States. If an employer does not perform the procedure outlined in the Form I-9, and accurately complete the Form I-9, such employer is subject to civil penalties and persons completing such forms on behalf of the employer may also be subject to criminal penalties for not complying with the eligibility verification requirements under United States immigration law. 
   Accurately verifying employment eligibility and successfully completing the U.S. Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service&#39;s Form I-9 to verify employment eligibility requires that each employer train at least one person who develops the requisite expertise and familiarity with verification requirements to accurately complete such forms. Employers will also have to monitor previously completed Form I-9&#39;s to determine that new Form I-9&#39;s are completed prior to expiration the documents used to verify the employees&#39; eligibility to work in the United States. Industry wide, across the United States, this creates a large financial burden for various companies to adequately assure that their personnel are appropriately trained to meet and maintain such compliance requirements, and often, once trained, such trained persons are subject to turnover. Additionally, as employment eligibility requirements change, such persons will have to keep current on any regulatory changes and implement any changes in regulatory requirements into the employment eligibility program of each particular employer in the United States. 
   SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
   A method is provided for assuring employer compliance with verifying employment eligibility in the United States, which aids employers in assuring compliance with federal regulations. An employer may utilize the method of the present invention by accessing a software program over a global computer network, through telecommunications systems, or by obtaining and loading the appropriate software in a local computer on his job site. Compliance alerts and compliance tips are displayed for guiding an employer in completing the Form I-9. The compliance tips may be selected and modified by a particular employer. After a Form I-9 is completed, the data in such forms may be automatically audited to analyze whether the completed Form I-9 has been accurately completed, and a listing provided of various errors and additional data required. During the audit, various compliance rules are applied to Form I-9 data entered into a data processing system to determine whether various Immigration and Naturalization Service regulations are met in completing an employment eligibility verification Form I-9. The method is administered by a singular service provider for multiple employers, to assure that applicable regulations are incorporated and updated regularly to assure industry-wide compliance. The process further provides a central system for managing the current Form I-9&#39;s for employers, including identifying documents which are soon to expire such that the employers can be notified to complete a new employment eligibility Form I-9 prior to the expiration of such documents, which assures continued compliance with federal regulations. 

   
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
     For a more complete understanding of the present invention and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings in which: 
       FIG. 1  is a view screen display of an I-9 Administration Section, showing various tasks for use in a process according to the present invention; 
       FIG. 2  is a view screen display of a Reporting Section, showing various report options which are available according to the process; 
       FIG. 3  is a view screen display of an Utilities Section, showing various administrative tasks for managing administration of and access to the process; 
       FIG. 4  is a view screen display of Action Options which may be performed in working with a particular Form I-9 document, or a group of documents; 
       FIGS. 5A and 5B  together provide a flow chart showing operation of the process; 
       FIG. 6  is a block diagram showing a process for searching for an existing Form I-9 document among various documents affiliated with a particular employer; 
       FIG. 7  is a flow chart showing a process for performing a compliance analysis, to determine whether an employment eligibility verification form has been accurately completed; and 
       FIG. 8  is a flow chart showing various process steps for displaying alerts when document types are selected as verification documents for use in a particular I-9 document. 
   

   DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
     FIG. 1  is a view screen display of an I-9 Administration Section listing  12  for use in verifying employment eligibility of a potential employee according to the present invention. The I-9 Administration Section  12  lists several options for initiating various tasks. The first listed task is entitled “Audit A New I-9 Document.” The Audit task allows a user to import data from an existing Form I-9 document, and then to perform a compliance rules analysis on the data of the existing Form I-9 document to determine whether the existing Form I-9 document was correctly completed. Such data for auditing may be imported from another type of database, manually entered into the system, or optically scanned from previously completed Form I-9 documents. The next listed task in the I-9 Administration Section  12  is entitled “Add A New I-9 Document.” The Add task allows a user to initiate the pulling up of a blank Form I-9, in which data can be filled into the various fields. The I-9 Administration Section  12  further includes a task listing entitled “Existing I-9 Documents Search And Edit” task, by which all of the existing Form I-9 documents associated with a particular employer are listed for selection by a user for editing. The user may then look through the listing to select a particular Form I-9 document and select various Action Options, such as performing the compliance rules analysis in a recalculate analysis, printing, auditing, editing or deleting. The last listed task in the I-9 Administration Section  12  is the Individual I-9 Document Search and Edit. The Individual I-9 Document task allows a user to search for an existing Form I-9 document for a particular employee, by searching for such employee fields as first name, last name, date of birth, social security number, and other such employee identifying numbers. 
     FIG. 2  is a view screen display of a Reporting Section  14 , from which various reports may be selected for review by a user. The first listed report is an Additional Information Needed Report, which lists various data needed to complete the Form I-9&#39;s associated with a particular employer as identified by performing the compliance rules analysis on the Form I-9 documents associated with a particular employer. Preferably, the Additional Information Needed Report will not list incurable defects in the Form I-9&#39;s being analyzed, but will only this those defects in the documents which may be cured. Such curable defects will include various incompatible and missing data entries listed in Form I-9 documents associated with the particular employer. The Additional Information Needed Report may also identify both blank fields and inconsistent entries, such as the selection of incompatible document types or the entry of incompatible dates, which cannot be correct. 
   The next listing in the Reports Screen of  FIG. 2  is Data Entry Audit Report, which provides a report of when various Form I-9&#39;s are completed for review by an employer. Typically, the employer will list a range of dates from which the report is created. The Data Entry Audit Report will then provide a listing of the Form I-9&#39;s which were completed during the selected range of dates, preferably providing the listing in tabular form and including the for each listed Form I-9 the employee&#39;s name, social security number, date of hire, work location, and the like. From this listing, employer&#39;s may determine if a sufficient number of Form I-9&#39;s have been completed to accommodate the amount of persons hired by the employer over selected range of dates. 
   The next listing in the Reporting Section  14  is a Statement of I-9 Completion Report. This report lists for the various Form I-9 documents associated with a particular employer both the documents which are completed, and the documents which are completed except for incurable defects. The Statement of I-9 Completion Report will not list those documents which have curable defects, which should be listed in the Additional Information Needed Report. Similarly, the Additional Information Needed Report will not list those documents which are listed in the Statement of I-9 Completion Report as being either fully complete Form I-9&#39;s, or fully complete Form I-9&#39;s except for incurable defects. 
   Presently, there are four incurable defects which, if corrected on a Form I-9, would constitute fraud and subject the responsible employer and any person making such changes on that employer&#39;s behalf to criminal liability. One of the four incurable defects is failure of an employer to require a newly hired employee to complete all or any portion of Section 1 of a Form I-9 no later than on the date on which that employee&#39;s employment services for that employer commence. A second one of the four incurable defects is failure of an employer to reverify Form I-9 Section 1 or Section 2 expiration date, if such date requires reverification, no later than the date on which the document to which such date relates expires. A third incurable defect is failure of an employer to complete Section 2 of the Form I-9 within three (3) days of the employee&#39;s employment start date, which could be significantly later than the date on which the employment was offered and accepted and which was the first opportunity under law to complete the Form I-9 without possible consequences for discriminatory treatment. A fourth incurable defect is failure of an employer, when rehiring a former employee, to update Section 3 of the Form I-9 that remains on file for that employee, subject to the retention requirement. Each of the above-noted four defects are incurable because they are date sensitive and it would be fraudulent for a person to place a different date on a Form I-9 than that on which the pertinent Form I-9 section has actually been completed. 
   The next report listed in the Reporting Section  14  is a Combined Audit Report, which is preferably a combination of the Additional Information Needed Report and the Statement of I-9 Completion Report. The Combined Audit Report lists all of the Form I-9&#39;s associated with a particular employer, which includes the Form I-9&#39;s which are fully complete, the Form I-9&#39;s which have curable defects and the Form I-9&#39;s which have incurable defects. The Combined Audit Report will also identify the employee of the listed Form I-9, and the particular defects associated with various ones of the listed Form I-9s. 
   The next report in Reporting Section  14  is an Expiring Employment Documents Report. This report identifies various documents which are expiring on particular dates which are associated with a particular employer. This report may be run according to a selected range of dates, such that an employer may begin processing the required updates for the pertinent Form I-9&#39;s prior to the actual dates of expiration of the documents. Should a document used in Section 2 of the Form I-9 expire prior to updating of the pertinent Form I-9, this would create an incurable defect for that particular Form I-9, subjecting the employer to potential liability. 
   The next report is an Invoice Report, which lists the various invoice balances a particular employer has on account with a particular compliance analysis service provider providing the services of to the present invention to that employer. The next report listed in the Reporting Section  14  is a Recalculate Statement of I-9 Completion Report, which will perform the compliance rules analysis by running checks for each Form I-9 associated with a particular employer to provide an error listing in a Statement of I-9 Completion Report for the various documents. 
     FIG. 3  is a view screen listing of a Utilities Section  16 , listing various options for performing administrative tasks. The first menu listing is entitled “Add A New Company.” The next listing is entitled “Company Data Search &amp; Edit,” in which data associated with a particular employer may be searched and edited. The next listing in the Utilities Section  16  is entitled “Administer Logon ID&#39;s.” This task is used for changing various logon ID&#39;s and passwords for particular employees of an employer who are performing the administrative tasks for the present method. The next listed task is entitled “Login Notices Administration,” which allows the service provider to post various notices regarding processing of the Form I-9&#39;s, such as changes in immigration regulations which are not yet incorporated into the rules used for compliance analysis. The Login Notices may also post for viewing special notices issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Services affecting a particular group of foreign nationals, and the like. Preferably, such Login Notices will be provided by a pop-up window which appears when a user logs into the system. The next listing is entitled “I-9 TIPS Administration,” which allows a particular employer to modify the TIPS for display to their associated users who are entering data into a Form I-9. 
     FIG. 4  is a view screen listing of Action Options  18 , which are various actions which may be taken when reviewing a particular Form I-9 document. The first is listed action is entitled “Edit,” and allows a user to go back into the selected document to edit the document. Preferably, the document is displayed and the user is allowed access to the various individual fields by selecting a particular field viewed on the screen with a graphical user interface. The next action listed in the Action Options Menu  18  is entitled, “Audit.” The Audit feature displays the compliance rules analysis report for a particular selected Form I-9 document, without displaying any alerts or TIPS. The Audit feature may be used to generate a Statement of I-9 Completion Report for particular documents, or for a group of documents of an associated employer. The next action option is entitled “View Print Screen,” and primarily displays the Form I-9 documents in a fixed graphical format, as it will be printed if printing is selected when the View Print Screen option is displayed. The next listed option in the Action Options Menu  18  is entitled “Service Charges,” and provides a display of the various service charges due by the employer affiliated with the user I.D. currently accessing the system. The next option is entitled “Delete,” and may be used to delete the field data of a particular Form I-9 document. The next option in the Action Options Menu  18  is entitled “Display Additional Information Needed Report,” which provides a display listing of additional data required to complete the selected documents associated with the particular employer. The next option in the Action Options Menu  18  is entitled “Recalculate Analysis,” and recalculates the audit report of the compliance analysis for a group of particular selected documents. This option, as opposed to the audit option, would recalculate the analysis from a group of selected documents by running checks in I-9&#39;s. The audit feature will only recalculate the checks analysis for a particular document. 
     FIG. 5A  and  FIG. 5B  together provide a flow chart showing a method for verifying employment eligibility of employees according to the present invention. The flowchart begins at block  20 , after the employee has completed and signed Section 1 of a Form I-9 and the employer is beginning to complete Section 2 of the Form I-9. The first step in the process is the step of selecting documents from a list of acceptable documents, shown in block  20 . After selection of acceptable documents, the employer must personally review originals of the acceptable documents, and not copies, in the step shown in block  22 . In block  24 , a display Task Menu Screen step is depicted, in which preferably a combined menu listing of the I-9 Administration Section  12  of  FIG. 1 , the Reporting Section  14  of  FIG. 2 , and the Utilities Section  16  of  FIG. 3  are displayed on a single view screen. The next step is to select a task, with the selected task being shown in  FIG. 5A  as Add A New I-9 Document, which is depicted in block  26 . In block  28 , the Form I-9 document is displayed on a view screen. If Add A New I-9 Document is selected in I-9 Administration Section  12 , the display I-9 document step of block  28  will display an Form I-9 document with all the fields blank, that is, a blank document will be displayed. If Edit An Existing Document is selected, the display I-9 document screen in block  28  will display an existing document, with data for the various fields displayed in the Form I-9 document. Next, a user will select a data entry field and the computer will determine whether the field has been selected in decision block  30 . When a field is selected in block  32 , the display TIPS step is performed. If there are any TIPS for display with the associated field, such TIPS will be displayed on the view screen in a pop-up window. In block  34 , the data will be entered by the user and stored in a database for the Form I-9, and then the new entered data is displayed in the Form I-9 document screen  28 . The process returns to the select field decision block  30 , and if a new field is selected, the display TIPS step  32  and enter data step  34  are performed. The process will return to the display Form I-9 document screen shown in block  28  and wait until a new field is selected for data entry. New fields may be selected by hitting the Enter key without changing the data listings in a particular field. 
   Next, the process will proceed to the step depicted in block  36  if anew field is not selected. Block  36  is a run checks decision block which determines whether run checks has been selected by requesting an audit or perform compliance analysis task. From the run checks decision block  36 , the process proceeds to block  38  to apply various Form I-9 document rules will be applied to the various data fields to perform the compliance rules analysis. The rules for compliance analysis are set forth in Table III. If any errors are detected in the decision block  40  after the compliance analysis is complete for the particular Form I-9, an error list of various errors compiled will be displayed in block  42 . If not, the process will return back to the display Form I-9 screen of block  28 . If errors are displayed in block  42 , they will preferably be displayed in a pop-up window which is overlaid with the display Form I-9 document screen of block  28 . 
   If the option of save and print a particular Form I-9 is selected, as determined in decision block  44 , the process proceeds to perform for the compliance analysis step depicted in block  46 . The compliance analysis step of block  46  is the same as the compliance analysis step depicted in block  38 , and is performed as a final check prior to printing. If errors are detected as shown in block  48 , then the a display error list report  50  will be performed and the listing of errors will be displayed in a window which pops up to overlay the display I-9 document screen of block  28 . At this point, an option is provided to cancel printing and stay in the display I-9 screen so that the user may correct the errors, and an option is also provided to disregard the errors and proceed to the display print window step of block  52  to print the Form I-9. If no errors are detected in decision block  48 , the process will proceed to the display print window step depicted in block  52 . Reminder messages preferably appear, such as a reminder that the user should review an employee&#39;s original documents in completing the Form I-9. Then, a user may select to print the Form I-9 document in block  54 , and the process will proceed to the step of block  56  in which the Form I-9 document will be printed and saved. The print process ends as depicted in block  58 , and the process returns to the display I-9 Administration Section of block  24 . If print is not selected in decision block  54 , then a user may select to go back to the previous screens, as depicted in block  60 . As depicted in block  62 , a user may selected go back to previous display screens to return to pull down an I-9 search and edit a document, by proceeding back to the step of the Display I-9 Administration Section depicted in block  24 . 
   If an Form I-9 document is being displayed on a view screen in the step depicted in the block  28 , and cancel is selected, then the process will determine that cancel has been selected as shown by the step depicted in the decision block  72 . The field data will be cleared from the various fields of the Form I-9 document as shown in the step depicted in block  74 , and the process will return to the task menu as depicted in the block  24 . If the save and return to the task menu is selected while the process is displaying a Form I-9 document on the view screen in the step depicted in block  28 , this will be detected in the step depicted in the decision block  76 . The field data is saved in the step depicted in block  78 , and the process will proceed to the display task menu step of block  24 . If, when the Form I-9 document is displayed on the screen in the step depicted in block  28 , the save and add a new Form I-9 document is selected, field data for the particular document being displayed at the time of selection will be saved in the step depicted in block  82 . The fields will be reset and cleared in step depicted in block  84 , and the process will proceed to the step depicted in block  28 , in which a blank Form I-9 document will be displayed on the view screen. 
     FIG. 6  is a block diagram showing the process for searching for existing Form I-9 documents affiliated with a particular employer. From the display task menu step of block  24 , if the Existing I-9 Documents Search and Edit task is selected from the I-9 Administration Section of  FIG. 1 , the process will proceed to the select task step depicted the block  92 . In the step depicted in block  94 , the various Form I-9 documents will be displayed in the search and edit screen. This is a tabular listing of each of the various ones listing identifying indicia, such as the employee name and other such information. In the step depicted in block  96 , all the Form I-9 documents associated with the user I.D. and action options will be listed. The various action options available are preferably those listed in the Action Options menu  18  of  FIG. 4 . In the step depicted in block  98 , a particular action option is selected and performed by going to the respective steps selected in the process of the block diagram shown in  FIGS. 5A and 5B . Then, the process will end in the step  100  and return to the step of displaying the I-9 Administration Section  22  of  FIG. 1 . 
     FIG. 7  depicts a process flow for performing the compliance analysis, that is the run checks step for the blocks  38  and the block  46  of  FIG. 5A . Once the run checks feature is selected to determine the compliance analysis report, the process proceeds to the block  102 , which depicts the step of loading field values into memory. Then, expected values are loaded into memory in the step depicted in the block  104 . In the block  106 , the expected values loaded into block  104  and the field values loaded into block  102 , for a particular field, are compared to determine whether an error has occurred. If an error has occurred, the expected field values will not match or equal the loaded field values, and a generate error step will be performed as depicted in the block  108 , The error listing will be added to an error list in the block  110 . Then, the process will return to the step in decision block  112  to determine whether to repeat the process depicted in the blocks  102 ,  104 ,  106 . If another field is not to be checked, then it will proceed to end step depicted in block  114 , and the process will then return back to the display screen shown in step  24  of  FIG. 5A . 
     FIG. 8  is a block diagram depicting the various process steps for displaying alerts when particular document types are selected in the verification documents fields of a particular Form I-9 document. When a select document type filed is selected as depicted in block  122 , a process will proceed to decision block  124  to determine if there is an alert for the particular document type selected in the pull down menu. If there is no alert, the process will proceed to the end step shown in block  130 , returning back to the display I-9 document screen, depicted in the block  28  in  FIG. 5A . If there is an alert, the process will proceed to the step of displaying the alert, as depicted in the block  126 . The alert is preferably displayed as a pop-up window which overlays the I-9 document screen. Once the alert has been viewed, the user may close the alert window, as depicted in block  128 . Then, the display alert process will end, as depicted in the block  130 , and the process will proceed back to the display I-9 screen, as depicted in block  28  of  FIG. 5A . 
   The method of determining employer compliance with verification of employment eligibility of the present invention is performed, at least in part, in a data processing system. The processing may be performed across a distributed network, such in a global computer network, or across telecommunication systems, with processing of various steps according to the method occurring for a particular document at remote locations. For example, an employer could access a remote server through a global computer network or through a telecommunications system, log into the server and remotely process the employment verification of an employee at the remote server. Similarly, the employer may use a local data processing system to locally process the information to verify the identity and employment eligibility of the employee. Employer and employee signatures may also be applied to an electronic document via an electronic or digital signatures, according to the present invention. Various steps according to the method may also be processed in part manually by the employer verifying employment, and then the resulting data may be optically scanned into or manually entered from a paper for I-9 for electronic storage, such that a data processing system can perform the checks step of  FIG. 7  to determine employer compliance with various Immigration and Naturalization Service regulations. 
   The process also preferably uses the Social Security Administration&#39;s Enumeration Verification Service (“EVS”) to verify the validity of a social security number presented by an employee for employment, and such other employee data which may be provided by the employee. Other such employee date provided by and employee and entered into a data processing system according to the present invention may be compared to data listed for the employee on a remote server to audit the accuracy of the employee supplied data, such as with government databases, in addition to the Social Security Administration&#39;s EVS, credit bureaus, licensing and association databases, general databases, and the like. Historical databases may also be used to audit old work address, business address, and such other employee provided information. 
   Tables are listed in the following to provide various examples of forms, rules and the like used with the present invention. Table I lists one page of a Form I-9. Table II lists acceptable documents for use for identification purposes with the Form I-9. Table III lists the verification rules. Table IV lists Alerts. Table IV lists the TIPs. 
   Although the preferred embodiment has been described in detail, it should be understood that various changes, substitutions and alterations can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.