Which documents you can accept for a Form I-9
Form I-9 List A, B and C explained for employers: which documents you must accept, which ones you cannot ask for, and how to spot a forged one.
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How the three lists actually work
Every employer in the United States must complete a Form I-9 for each person hired, citizen or not. The form asks you to examine documents that establish two separate things: who the person is, and whether they are authorized to work. The Lists of Acceptable Documents on page 2 of the form organize this into three columns, and the logic is simpler than it looks.
A new hire presents either one document from List A, or one document from List B together with one document from List C. That is the whole rule. List A covers identity and work authorization at once, which is why a single document is enough. List B establishes identity only. List C establishes work authorization only. There is no fourth combination, and no document from List B can ever be paired with another from List B.
The point that catches employers out is who chooses. The employee chooses. You present the list, they decide what to hand over, and you examine what they give you. Asking for a specific document, asking for more documents than the form requires, or refusing a document that appears on the list because you are unfamiliar with it are all treated as violations, even when your intention was to be careful.
List A: identity and work authorization in one document
If the new hire presents one of these, you are done. Do not ask for anything from List B or List C on top of it.
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U.S. Passport or U.S. Passport Card
Both are acceptable and both must be unexpired. The passport card is a wallet-sized document, not a lesser one: it carries the same weight on the I-9 as the book.
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Permanent Resident Card, Form I-551
Commonly called a green card. Older versions of the same document, labeled Alien Registration Receipt Card, remain acceptable if unexpired. Some cards are extended beyond their printed expiration date by a receipt notice from USCIS; the card and the notice are then examined together.
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Foreign passport with a temporary I-551 stamp or notation
A newly admitted permanent resident may not have the physical card yet. The stamp in the passport, or the printed notation on a machine-readable immigrant visa, does the same job.
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Employment Authorization Document with photograph, Form I-766
The EAD. It is a List A document, not a List C document, because it carries a photograph and establishes identity as well as work authorization. This is one of the most common misclassifications on paper I-9s.
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Foreign passport with Form I-94 and an endorsement of nonimmigrant status
For a nonimmigrant authorized to work for a specific employer. The name on the I-94 must match the passport, and the endorsement must show a status that permits work for you. Presented together, the two documents count as a single List A entry.
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FSM or RMI passport with Form I-94
A passport from the Federated States of Micronesia or the Republic of the Marshall Islands, together with an I-94 showing admission as a nonimmigrant under the Compact of Free Association.
List B: identity only
A List B document proves who the person is and nothing more. It must always be paired with a document from List C. If you participate in E-Verify, the List B document you accept has to include a photograph.
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State driver's license or state ID card
Issued by a state or an outlying possession of the United States, and showing a photograph or identifying information such as name, date of birth, sex, height, eye color and address.
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ID card issued by a federal, state or local government agency
Same requirement: photograph or identifying information. Employee badges issued by private companies do not qualify.
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School ID card with a photograph
Acceptable on its own terms. The photograph is mandatory here regardless of whether you use E-Verify.
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Voter's registration card
Acceptable, though it carries no photograph, which means it cannot be used by an E-Verify employer.
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U.S. military card or draft record
Both are on the list. Military dependent identification cards are listed separately and are also acceptable.
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U.S. Coast Guard Merchant Mariner Card
A specific credential that many HR teams have never seen. Unfamiliarity is not a reason to refuse it.
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Native American tribal document
Note that a tribal document appears on both List B and List C. Presented once, it satisfies one list, not both.
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Canadian driver's license
The only foreign driver's license on the form. Licenses from any other country are not acceptable List B documents.
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For a person under 18 with none of the above
A school record or report card, a clinic, doctor or hospital record, or a day-care or nursery school record. These substitutes apply only to minors who genuinely cannot produce a standard List B document.
List C: work authorization only
A List C document says nothing about identity. It always travels with a List B document.
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Unrestricted Social Security card
Acceptable only if the card carries no restrictive legend. A card printed with not valid for employment, or valid for work only with DHS authorization, or the older wording referring to INS authorization, is not an acceptable List C document on its own. Read the card, do not assume.
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Certification of report of birth issued by the Department of State
Forms FS-545, DS-1350 and FS-240. These document a birth abroad to U.S. citizen parents.
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Original or certified copy of a U.S. birth certificate
Issued by a state, county, municipal authority or U.S. territory, and bearing an official seal. A photocopy without a seal is not acceptable, and neither is a hospital souvenir certificate with footprints on it.
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Native American tribal document
Listed on List C as well as List B, but a single document cannot fill both slots at once.
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U.S. Citizen ID Card, Form I-197
No longer issued, but valid examples still circulate and remain acceptable.
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Identification Card for Use of Resident Citizen, Form I-179
Also discontinued, also still acceptable when presented.
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Employment authorization document issued by DHS
A catch-all entry covering DHS-issued work authorization documents that are not the Form I-766 card.
Examining what the employee hands you
Your legal duty is to examine the document and decide whether it reasonably appears to be genuine and to relate to the person presenting it. You are not expected to be a forensic examiner. You are expected to look.
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Take the physical document
Examine the original in the presence of the employee. A photograph of a document sent by text message is not an examination. Employers enrolled in E-Verify and in good standing may use the authorized alternative procedure for remote examination, which has its own requirements; outside that procedure, the document is examined in person.
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Check that it is unexpired
Every document with an expiration date must be unexpired on the day you examine it. The exceptions are narrow and always documented: certain cards are extended by an accompanying USCIS notice, and that notice must be presented alongside the card.
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Check that it relates to this person
Compare the photograph to the face in front of you, and compare the name to what appears on the other document presented and on the form. A different spelling can have an innocent explanation, such as a recent marriage; ask, and note the explanation.
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Read the restrictive legends
This is where most avoidable errors happen. A Social Security card with a work restriction printed on it, an EAD whose category code does not permit employment with you, an I-94 endorsement for a status that does not include work authorization. The document can be entirely genuine and still not do the job.
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Record the document, do not over-record
Enter the document title, issuing authority, number and expiration date in Section 2. If you photocopy documents, do it consistently for every employee, and retain the copies with the form. Copying for some hires and not others is itself a compliance problem.
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Complete Section 2 on time
Section 2 must be completed within three business days of the first day of employment. If the person is hired for fewer than three business days, it must be completed on the first day.
What actually gets employers penalized
In enforcement practice, the trouble rarely comes from accepting a clever forgery. It comes from being too demanding with documents, or from paperwork discipline.
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Telling the employee which document to bring
Saying that you need to see a green card, or a Social Security card, rather than presenting the lists and letting the person choose, is document abuse. It is unlawful under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act, and it is enforced separately from immigration compliance itself.
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Asking for more than the form requires
Requesting a List A document and also a List C document, or asking for a second piece of identification to be safe, is over-documentation. It is treated the same way as demanding a specific document.
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Refusing a valid document you do not recognize
A Canadian driver's license, a Merchant Mariner Card, a Form I-179. These are unusual, but they are on the list. Refusing them because they look unfamiliar puts you in the wrong, not the employee.
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Re-verifying when you should not
U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents are not re-verified. Neither is a List B identity document that has expired. Running a fresh check on a permanent resident because their green card reached its printed expiration date is a classic and costly mistake.
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Losing the form
Forms must be retained for three years after the date of hire, or one year after employment ends, whichever is later. A missing form is a certain penalty; a form with a minor recording error is often correctable.
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Accepting a receipt indefinitely
A receipt showing that a lost, stolen or damaged document has been applied for is acceptable, but only for a limited window, after which the actual replacement document must be presented. A receipt that never turns into a document is a gap in your file.
A genuine document and a manufactured one, side by side
You are not required to detect a professional forgery, but the ones that circulate most are not professional.
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Card surface and printing
A genuine Permanent Resident Card or EAD is a rigid polycarbonate card with laser-engraved elements, tactile relief you can feel with a fingernail, and holographic images that shift as you tilt the card. A counterfeit is typically a flat printed card, glossy, with a hologram that looks the same from every angle.
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Text on the back
Counterfeiters concentrate on the front, which is what people look at. Errors cluster on the reverse: misspellings, awkward phrasing, misaligned blocks of small print, a machine-readable zone whose characters do not line up on a consistent baseline.
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Number formats
Card numbers, receipt numbers and alien registration numbers follow fixed formats. A number with the wrong length, or a receipt number whose three-letter prefix does not correspond to any service center, is a strong signal even when the card itself looks convincing.
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Internal consistency
Date of birth on the front, date of birth encoded in the machine-readable zone, date of birth on the second document presented. Genuine documents agree with each other. Altered ones agree with themselves on the side that was edited and nowhere else.
The rules that sit around the form
Two bodies of law apply at once, and they pull in opposite directions. One tells you to verify. The other tells you not to verify too hard.
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Anti-discrimination
The Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits treating people differently in the verification process on the basis of citizenship status or national origin. The Immigrant and Employee Rights Section of the Department of Justice enforces this. Practically: same process, same requests, same lists, for every single hire, with no exceptions for people who have an accent or a foreign-sounding name.
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E-Verify is separate from the I-9
E-Verify is an electronic confirmation system run by DHS in partnership with the Social Security Administration. It is mandatory for some employers and voluntary for others, and it is run after the I-9, not instead of it. Participating changes one thing about your document examination: List B documents must include a photograph.
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The Social Security Number Verification Service is not a hiring tool
SSNVS exists so employers can match names and numbers for wage reporting. It is not designed for pre-employment screening, and a mismatch it returns says nothing definitive about work authorization. Using it as a hiring filter is a misuse of the service.
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Good faith is a real defense, but only for paperwork
If you examined a document that reasonably appeared genuine and it turns out to have been a forgery, you have a defense. That defense disappears if you had actual knowledge that the person was not authorized, or if you never completed the form properly in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
No. You present the Lists of Acceptable Documents and the employee chooses what to present. Naming a document, even helpfully, is document abuse under the anti-discrimination provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The one thing you may do is tell the employee that they need either one List A document, or one document from List B plus one from List C.
Only if it carries no restrictive legend. A card printed with not valid for employment, or with wording limiting work to holders with DHS authorization, does not establish work authorization by itself. Read the face of the card before recording it.
No. You examine the original document, and outside the authorized alternative procedure available to certain E-Verify participants, you do so in the physical presence of the employee. Keeping photocopies afterward is optional, but if you keep them for one employee you should keep them for all.
Do not automatically reject it and do not automatically re-verify. Lawful permanent residents are not subject to re-verification, and USCIS extends card validity through receipt notices in defined circumstances. Ask whether the person has an accompanying notice, and examine the card and the notice together.
Three business days from the first day of employment. If the engagement lasts fewer than three business days, Section 2 must be completed on the first day. Late completion is a recordable violation even if the underlying work authorization was valid throughout.
Check it against the Lists of Acceptable Documents on page 2 of the form. If it appears there, and it is unexpired and reasonably appears to relate to the person, you accept it. Unfamiliarity is not a lawful reason to refuse a listed document, and refusing one exposes you to a discrimination claim.
Three years after the date of hire, or one year after the date employment ends, whichever date is later. Store them separately from the general personnel file so they can be produced quickly if an inspection notice arrives.
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