Section 1 overview
Section 1, which is filled out by the employee themselves, is the first step in the I-9 process. This form asks employees to specify personal information (such as name, date of birth, and citizenship status), and to provide documentation proving their identify and eligibility to legally work in the United States.
This section can be filled out at any point after an offer of employment is accepted, and needs to be completed before or on the employee’s first day of employment for pay.[1]
Seeing Workers with Outstanding Section 1 Forms
To view all of your employees who have not yet submitted their Section 1 form yet, go to the I-9 worker table (Onboard app in the sidebar > I-9 Forms page). These employees will have a status of Pending Section 1:
From there, take a look at the Start Date column to see which employees will be starting soon. If an employee is starting soon but has not yet submitted their Section 1 form, then you can take the following steps to message them directly:
Click on the employee’s name in the table, which will open their worker profile
From there, click on the Message button to open the message editor:
3. In the message editor, write & send an email and/or SMS message to the worker, reminding them to complete their I-9 task on or before their first day of work
Employee Workflow in their Worker Portal
Your employees will benefit from the flexibility of our mobile-optimized I-9 flow. Once an onboarding flow with an I-9 task is assigned to them, each of your workers will see that task from directly within their worker portal.
This I-9 task guides each employee easily through the Section 1 form, splitting it up into shorter, easy to fill out forms, instead of one large document form.
Personal Information
The Section 1 task begins with the personal information form. The Fountain I-9 Center makes this even easier to fill out by automatically pulling in information from the worker’s profile, such as their name, email, phone number, and address.
Citizenship Status [2]
After filling out their personal information, each employee will need to specify their citizenship status, out of these four statuses:
Citizen of the United States
Noncitizen national of the United States (”an individual born in American Samoa, certain former citizens of the former Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and certain children of noncitizen nationals born abroad.”)
Lawful permanent resident (”an individual who is not a U.S. citizen and who resides in the United States under legally recognized and lawfully recorded permanent residence as an immigrant.”)
Noncitizen authorized to work (“An individual who has authorization to work but is not a U.S. citizen, noncitizen national, or lawful permanent resident.”)
➡️ The first two citizenship statuses do not require any further information from the employee.
If the employee is a lawful permanent resident, then they will also need to specify one of the following:
USCIS Number, or
A-Number
If they employee is a noncitizen authorized to work, then they must provide the following information:
The date (month, date, and year) that their authorization to work expires
One of the following:
Their USCIS Number or A-Number value
Their Form I-94 Admission Number (an 11-digit number issues by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol)
Their foreign passport number and country of issuance
Documentation
After specifying their citizenship status, employees will select which document types they’ll be uploading in order to prove both their identity and their eligibility to work in the U.S.
The list of acceptable document types [3] allow for either:
One document that establishes both identity and employment authorization (such as a United States passport), or
Two separate documents that each establish identity and employment authorization (such as a driver’s license and a social security card).
The document types that can be presented vary slightly based on citizenship status. For example, only U.S. citizens and noncitizen nationals can use a U.S. Passport as a document here.
The Fountain I-9 Center takes the guesswork out of this by only showing workers document types that they can present based on their answer to the previous “Citizenship Status” question.
After selecting a document type(s) to upload, the employee will then directly upload a file of the front and back of each document, directly from their phone:
Preparer & Translator
After uploading documents, the employee will then indicate whether or not they used a preparer or translator who helped them to complete the Section 1 form. If they did not, then there are no further questions, but if they did, then the preparer will have to fill out the following fields:
First Name
Middle Initial (if appliable)
Last Name
Address
City or Town
State
Zip Code
Underneath that, the preparer will take legal responsibility for the information provided in the form by typing out their first and last name, and signing it electronically.
Employee Signature
Once everything has been filled out, then the employee will finalize Section 1 by electronically signing it. This signature not only completes the Section 1 form, but also indicates that legally, the employee has given truthful information & valid documents in the form:
Next Steps
After submitting the Section 1 form, the employee can easily do a few different things from within their worker portal I-9 task:
View their submitted answers
Resubmit the Section 1 form, overwriting the already-submitted form (until Section 2 is complete and submitted to E-Verify)
Download a PDF of their filled-in form
Download images of their supporting documents
The information submitted in Section 1 will be reviewed again as part of the Section 2 workflow.
Sources:
[1] Completing Form I-9: article with a graphic outlining each step of the I-9 form, and links with more information about each step
[2] Form I-9 instructions: detailed instructions for each step of the I-9 Section 1 form, including information on each citizenship status
[3] List of Acceptable Documents: expandable lists of accepted documents from each available list, along with information on each document type
Related Articles
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