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Gina Carrillo (00:02)
Preparation, I mean, this applies to all facets of life, it allows people to respond calmly, appropriately, right?

Susan White (00:14)
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help people leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White Consulting, which is an HR consulting practice. Joining me is my dear friend JoDee Curtis, owner of Purple Ink, a large-scale HR firm that I’m a part of as an executive collaborator.

Immigration compliance should be high on the list of worries for US employers in 2026 and beyond. As a nation, we are experiencing increased federal worksite enforcement, heightened scrutiny of form I-9 documentation with more aggressive repercussions when I-9 errors are found, and evolving guidance around E-Verify. That’s a lot on our plate, right? For something that’s been kind of quiet for a long time.

JoDee Curtis (01:04)
Right.

Susan White (01:05)
Some organizations think that if they are not sponsoring work visas, there’s nothing really to be concerned about. What we are going to discuss in this episode is that we all need to realize that our immigration responsibilities are a business risk if we have weak practices. Ensuring all your employees have a legal right to work in the United States and appropriately documenting it is an important responsibility for all of us that are people leaders.

So, JoDee, to help us get our arms around this topic, we’ve invited one of our favorite guests back, Gina Carrillo, who is been here to talk to us about other legal implications over the years. So Gina is a labor law attorney whose EEOC background has been so helpful to JoDee and my understanding of how to stay compliant and yet create a JoyPowered® workspace. Gina currently practices private law and has become a very well-known and sought after speaker. We get wonderful feedback on any episode that Gina joins us. So.

Gina, thank you so much for coming back. You’re one of our favorite guests.

Gina Carrillo (02:15)
Thank you so much for having me. That means a lot.

Susan White (02:19)
Well, our first question for you on the topic of immigration is: what immigration responsibilities apply to every US employer, even if they never sponsor a foreign worker?

Gina Carrillo (02:31)
I think one of the biggest misconceptions employers can have sometimes is that immigration compliance only applies if you’re sponsoring H-1B visas or other kinds of employment visas. But in reality, every employer actually has immigration obligations because every employer has employees.

So the most obvious, right, is going to be completing your I-9 forms for every new hire to verify their identity and their work authorization. This means completing the forms timely, correctly, reviewing acceptable documents without demanding specific ones, retaining records for the required period, and being able to produce them in the event that you need to do an internal or external audit.

Beyond paperwork, employers have an obligation to not knowingly employ people who are unauthorized to work in the United States. This requirement can arise sometimes with independent contractors if they’re misclassified or if you knowingly use unauthorized labor to fulfill the contract.

But at the same time, employers also have to avoid unlawful discrimination in the hiring process, so sometimes these two things could be pulling in opposite directions. And that’s why consistency throughout the whole hiring process, especially with regard to immigration responsibilities, is so important.

One of the other things I wanna emphasize and talk about today too is just the importance of, like, having a clear compliance program when it comes to immigration processes. Having written onboarding processes, training people responsibly for hire, doing periodic reviews and making sure everyone’s following the same procedures, regardless of what an employee’s background is. But every employer’s got these immigration responsibilities just regardless of whether they’re hiring foreign workers or not.

JoDee Curtis (04:26)
Yeah.

Susan White (04:26)
Oh gosh, you’ve got our attention. I’m sure there’s a lot of our listeners that run small- to medium-sized businesses and they’ve not really put a lot of thought into it. So I am so glad that you’re here today.

JoDee Curtis (04:36)
Right.

Gina Carrillo (04:36)
Thank you.

JoDee Curtis (04:37)
And Gina, what do you see as some of the biggest compliance mistakes that employers are making with regards to immigration?

Gina Carrillo (04:48)
So most of the mistakes I see, as well as in other areas of employment law, are really just not related to bad intentions. People aren’t intentionally trying to go out and violate immigration laws, but there are common issues, right, such as not completing I-9s correctly or timely. This is a very common mistake that happens across employers from small to large.

Another issue that can arise is when managers are inconsistently doing hiring processes in the case of, like, having, like, a local multiple-location business. If you have managers in different locations, if they’re doing the onboarding, process is different from location to location. Compliance and just monitoring these situations can become really difficult when every manager has their own style and their own approach in doing the onboarding process.

So there are employers who complete I-9s and then they just never look at them again. And years later, they’ll discover there’s a missing signature, an incorrect date, they used an expired form at the time, incomplete forms or whatever happens. And hopefully they’re discovering these during an internal audit rather than during a government inquiry.

JoDee Curtis (06:01)
Right.

Gina Carrillo (06:02)
Another significant issue that can occur is sometimes it’s overcorrection. Employers sometimes are so worried about immigration enforcement that they begin to request additional documents from certain employees or treating workers differently based on their perceived citizenship or national origin. And that can create different kind of legal risks because, like I said in response to the last question, is immigration compliance and anti-discrimination just have to work together.

And then sometimes employers just don’t know who owns the process, right? Which I kind of alluded to a little bit earlier. Like, sometimes HR will assume that operations is handling it, right, or operations assumes HR is handling it and no one’s actually doing the periodic review and then there’s not really a system and the whole process isn’t actually working in an area where compliance quite frankly is just very, very important.

JoDee Curtis (06:53)
Right, right, right.

Susan White (06:53)
Yes, yes. Which really leads to the current administration. We’re recording this in the summer of 2026. How has the current administration’s increased worksite enforcement efforts changed the risk landscape for employers? I know you deal with a lot of different businesses. Are you seeing different types of enforcement?

Gina Carrillo (07:16)
I think there is definitely an increase in enforcement. I have had an increased number of calls of “I didn’t think this was going to happen to me,” in, you know, Prescott, Arizona or somewhere else that you might not think that these have — these kind of investigations might take place. But I think the practical takeaway for everyone is just what is with any other laws. You are not exempt from it, right? Doesn’t matter where you are, there you are going to be at risk for investigation.

But it’s not necessarily that the legal obligations on the employers have really changed all that drastically, but the consequences of poor compliance and poor procedures, it’s going to become more significant when this enforcement activity increases, right? Meaning that employers should be more proactive rather than reactive. I mean, obviously, that belief — in any kind of environment, I think that’s a lot of what we’re trying to do in our work. But waiting until that government agency contacts you, it’s just going to be way too late to discover that you have an I-9 inconsistent process, you’ve had issues for several years with some manager, right? If anything, this is a good time to just start actually making sure those things are in place.

From my perspective and from an employment lawyer’s perspective, this is just similar to wage and hour compliance, which I think is kind of having an opposite moment right now where the wage and hour is not necessarily having an increased worksite enforcement, but immigration is. And in the past, when we’ve had that increased wage and hour compliance, the same thing is true. We are doing constant FLSA audits of job descriptions, right? Making sure that everything’s compliant in overtime payment and all that good stuff.

But when enforcement priorities change like this, employers need to look at their policies and practices and just basically see whether they’re actually working. And a lot of that boils down to internal I-9 audits and training in those circumstances. So really, this is just the time to just be more proactive before somebody shows up.

JoDee Curtis (09:15)
Right, right. So what if you’re doing the right thing and you’re conducting your own internal I-9 audit and you find some errors and those errors might be people who started two or three years ago. It might be people who don’t even work with you anymore. What do you do to right those wrongs?

Gina Carrillo (09:39)
Well, obviously first, don’t panic, right? If anything, you should be relieved, right? Like, you found it. That’s always a good part. It can be stressful, right? And you’re not looking forward to having to deal with the problem, but at the same time, you’re the one who found it. So that’s always, I feel like, a great thing when I get that preemptive phone call.

So the next, well, and I would say before I move on from that, just…It’s rare in my practice when I’ve conducted I-9 audits for clients that I haven’t found a single mistake. I mean, it just happens, especially for people who do paper versus electronic. These just — things happen. And just being proactive about correcting those errors is really the most important part, right?

So the next step is to correct those errors. So you don’t backdate forms, you don’t try to conceal your mistakes, you basically own up to it. So on a paper form, whoever is responsible for the section, whether it’s the employee or the employer, you know, they do a line, they do an initial, they date it and make the change. If the change is not so — or the correction is not so obvious, what it was supposed to be, you do a little, know, document, document, document, right? You do a little blurb, handwritten, typed up and attach it with a paperclip to that I-9 and give the reason for the change and what happened, right? You’ve noticed the process and you’ve seen it’s done there.

For electronic I-9s, right, depending on how they’re managed, use the — use a systems corrective process to make sure that the original entry and the audit trail are preserved. I think that’s the most important thing here, is that you don’t start all over again, get rid of that old I-9, you just make sure your paper trail is preserved and you’ve done what you need to do.

So if these issues are isolated, you should make sure that there’s — they treat — they’re addressing them through corrective action or additional training. But if your audit is uncovering systemic issues, systemic deficiencies, this is a usually good time to involve somebody maybe externally, whether it’s employment counsel, immigration counsel if you do sponsorships, to help determine the appropriate path forward.

And then I think at the end of that, you’re asking why are these mistakes occurring? Are they occurring because of inadequate training? Were multiple people being onboarded at the same time? Multiple people at different managers at different locations doing the process differently? Was no one else checking the forms? Right, like, there’s just so many questions you could ask yourself to do once you’ve found those mistakes to prevent them from happening again in the future to the best of your ability.

JoDee Curtis (12:08)
Yeah, great advice.

Susan White (12:09)
I love any advice that starts with “don’t panic.” We should we should start every advice with that. “First of all, don’t panic.”

So, I would love to hear more advice about organizations that use E-Verify. They’ve been in the news a lot, especially people that aren’t using it yet, but they’re considering using it. Do you have any suggestions, advice for them, Gina?

Gina Carrillo (12:32)
I — E-Verify, you know, it’s not replacing your obligations under I-9s, right? You still have to retain all your records. You’ve got to do all your I-9 stuff. But E-Verify is really just, like — I prefer to think of it as just another tech solution, really, to your immigration process, right? It really helps and can be really helpful in a lot of ways, especially if you have remote employees, right? Then you can bring it on and you can review documents, you know, not in person, but you have the opportunity to do it electronically instead, which is a really, really good thing for people who have those remote employees.

It’s not a requirement, though many state laws, I believe Arizona included, do require employers to use E-Verify. So depending on your state, you might be already just required to do so. But if you’re considering any kind of government contract, that’s something that you’re going to be required to do anyways, too. So I think it’s a good tool to be using.

But when an employer is deciding to enroll, they should be — understand what their requirements are for the program, train people who are going to be using it, make sure they have procedures for handling any, like, non-confirmations appropriately.

I think the mistake that would happen here would be signing up automatically just improves compliance, right? Which it actually does. It’s just, just like any of these other things we’re talking about, it all comes down to the people who are running it, right? Are they doing consistently? Are they trained appropriately? Do they know how to use it?

So I think it’s a great tool. If it’s optional to you, right, you should make sure that if you don’t have it, that it actually is optional. And if you don’t, is there a benefit to you to putting it forward if you can apply it consistently?

JoDee Curtis (14:18)
Yeah, nice.

Susan White (14:18)
Good advice, thank you.

JoDee Curtis (14:21)
So Gina, what if ICE showed up at my office tomorrow and they came in, requested the I-9s, or maybe they want to talk to one of our employees? What should employers already have in place to respond confidently and compliantly?

Gina Carrillo (14:43)
I think you kind of already answered a part of the answer to the question, right, is that you should already have something in place. No one should be panicking, again, right? But there should already be a system in place long before ICE arrives. And preparation — I mean, as this applies to all facets of life, it allows people to respond calmly, appropriately, right?

So that starts with number one: who’s going to be in charge of interacting with these government officials, right? It’s not gonna be maybe the person who’s at the front door, it’s not gonna be a reception staff, but they should know exactly who to call. And they should know exactly who that backup person is. And as a result of that, know exactly, well, if those two people aren’t available, we need to find our counsel or something like that, right? Not just be like, who else is in the office that I can grab? It kind of goes down in those things because having that right person who’s had the proper training or two or three people, that’ll make a huge difference in that situation.

It’s also important to know and just have a plan for different legal requests have different, like, implications, right? If they’re doing basically administrative requests for records, is there actually a judicial warrant? Is there a notice of inspection, right? There’s just different levels of what that government, you know, if they’re showing up, what that exactly looks like and what your plan is. And if employers do not understand that distinction, they should at least have a counsel that knows what those distinctions are and what else what they should do next.

JoDee Curtis (16:09)
Yes.

Gina Carrillo (16:10)
And I think just, like, any of these experiences, employers should just avoid being confrontational in these situations very practically. Even if you don’t have a plan, hopefully you do from just listening to our podcast here, but acting calmly, cooperatively, professionally, organized, it’s just going to lead to better outcomes as opposed to trying to respond emotionally, worrying about what’s going to happen.

So on that note, even if you don’t have that plan, at the very least having some counsel, whether it’s general counsel, employment counsel, immigration counsel, somebody that you’ve talked to before people show up at the door, because as a lawyer, there’s only so much I can do if my first phone call is, “Hey, ICE is here. What do I do?” So knowing who to call before they arrive in your lobby at least is a good first step, if anything else.

Susan White (17:04)
You know, I’m having flashbacks right now. I can think of times where I was working for a bank and a police unit of some kind or FBI or somebody would show up and be everyone’s directing them right to me. And I’d look at them, I’d think, I’m trying to be calm, but I’d get on the phone like, “Can I give them this file? Can I…,” you know. So. Think – every — all listeners, please take the time to put your plan together. Don’t be caught unawares, especially on this very important topic.

JoDee Curtis (17:30)
Right.

Susan White (17:32)
So Gina, what other suggestions do you have for our listeners on the topic of employee — employer immigration responsibilities? Any last-minute thoughts?

Gina Carrillo (17:42)
Yeah, I mean, treat this compliance issue like you do other compliance issues, right? It can be intimidating, especially given the stringent requirements for I-9 forms and how much a little error can cause you problems, but just treat it like everything else, right?

Have your written policies — your written policies, not your just oral policies. Train your managers. Audit the process periodically, especially if you have different managers doing different processes or if you have different managers doing the I-9 stuff. Document your efforts. Don’t assume that because you’ve never had a problem, you’ve never had ICE show up, that everything’s going well, nothing’s gonna be a problem. You just don’t know.

I also just will always encourage employers to not make decisions based on assumptions or fear. Questions about work authorization, document verification, immigration compliance can sometimes overlap with immigration laws, employment laws, discrimination laws. So when something unusual arises, when you haven’t seen something before, it’s different documentation, whatever it is, asking questions early is always going to be less expensive than litigation, right? Just asking the question, reaching out. Yes, it does cost money to give that phone call out, but if you do it right the first time, then it’s not going to come back, right?

Susan White (19:09)
Very fair.

Gina Carrillo (19:10)
It’s just — good compliance, like anything else, it’s about creating those systems that are constantly monitored and applied consistently across the board to treat employees fairly. So that would be the way I’d approach it, just kind of like most other areas.

JoDee Curtis (19:26)
Great advice. And Gina, as a frequent and favorite guest of ours, you know, we always love to ask a JoyPowered® question. So, in your world of workplace regulatory compliance, where do you find joy in what you do?

Gina Carrillo (19:44)
I apologize if I’m repeating myself here, but you know, I don’t know, I — number one, I find this stuff interesting. I love these puzzles. I see them as managing so many different things, right? Especially when we’re talking about regulatory compliance. And I alluded to earlier, wage and hour’s so different from immigration. But at the same time, your compliance stuff can start looking the same and you’re building those stacks and a new law comes in and how does that change all that?

You know, a lot of my job can come in when things have already gone wrong. And what I like about the regulatory compliance and having these kinds of conversations is we really get to do the proactive work, help these problems before they cause issues, right? I mean, you know, I’m a lawyer, and I would make a lot of money from litigation, but I find the most joy in helping people to avoid it, actually.

It just, when people are trying to do the right thing and educate themselves and make the processes run smoothly and avoid those issues. And so when someone shows up at their door, not only are all their corrections made, they’re ready to go. I don’t know, that’s great. That’s fantastic. That’s the way it should be.

JoDee Curtis (21:00)
Yes, thank you for sharing.

Susan White (21:03)
That’s what I want in my attorney. I want them happy that we did it right, not that we had to litigate. So thank you.

Gina, thank you so much for being here. How could our listeners, if they wanted to engage with you, with your firm, I mentioned in your intro that you’re a highly sought after speaker now, how could they reach you?

Gina Carrillo (21:22)
Yes, so I work at an Arizona firm, Gammage & Burnham. It is at gblaw.com. So my email is gcarrillo at gblaw.com. And you can find me on their website. I practice in both Arizona and California and love to do this kind of stuff. So reach out.

Susan White (21:45)
Thank you very much.

JoDee Curtis (21:46)
Right. Yep. Thank you.

Gina Carrillo (21:48)
Thank you.

JoDee Curtis (21:50)
Susan, our listener question today is this. “How do you address the ‘earn and burn’ crowd? You know, the ones who earn a few hours of time off and immediately take it in whatever form.”

I haven’t heard that term before, but I like that.

Susan White (22:10)
I like it. As soon as they have some PTO time, they are out of here. This is a real issue for some employers, and it can be so frustrating for managers who have staff who are taking off every chance they can. If you assume innocence and realize there could be solid reasons this person needs to use their allotted time off to be present in someone’s lot someone else’s life or needs frequent mental breaks or something else we don’t have a line of sight to, it can help us reduce our stress and our urge to judge, right? On the other hand, things I would consider doing to try to stop this practice — because you know what? It’s not always innocent and it’s not always a good reflection or a positive reflection on that person. And…

JoDee Curtis (22:56)
Right.

Susan White (22:57)
…we know it’s draining. It’s draining for coworkers and it’s draining for bosses. What are some things you could do?

Well, suggestion one I have is educate your whole team on the value of accumulating time off balances in case of a medical or other emergency in the future. Sometimes if this is the someone’s first job, they don’t see it. They think, you know, they’re invincible. “I’m never gonna need time off. I’m never gonna have an accident.” Educating people, just socializing the fact to maybe give some real-life examples without naming people of individuals who had done a really good job accumulating a good PTO pot, and then they had something unforeseen happen and how it helped their family, helped themselves weather that storm in their life. So some education, I would try it.

Suggestion number two I have is, be really clear with your time off policy. So that red letter days, which we at the bank we used to say, you the 30th of the month when Social Security went to most people back then was a red letter day. Fridays were paydays, were red letter days. It meant that we needed all hands on deck. If you’re a business that you have red letter days or peak times and you can’t be left unmanned, be really specific about that in your time-off policy.

How much advance notice is needed or not based on the time of the month or the peak season? What people can use time off for, non-FMLA or other protected leave time instances.

Consider perhaps as an employer, maybe you want to institute a minimum time out of the out of work policy. Certainly, my background was in banking, we had a minimum five consecutive days a year had to be taken. Now we did that for audit control purposes, because it’s really hard if you’re, you know, doing something nefarious not to get caught if you’re out of the office for five days. But it can also be a really good PTO time management if you require a minimum amount of time off. At least when a person takes off, you know a chunk’s gonna be used. So they’re not taking off half a day or a day throughout the year that can drive your scheduling crazy, right?

JoDee Curtis (25:04)
Right.

Susan White (25:06)
Think about, is there things that you can upfront help your employees see the value of staying at work and letting their time accumulate so they take off meaningful, refreshing time, and/or be clear about how much advance notice you need. JoDee, you face this, I’m sure, not only in your own business, but with clients. Any other suggestions you would have about these people that “earn and burn” PTO time?

JoDee Curtis (25:31)
Yeah. Well, I think you hit it and that even, you know, although I don’t really like policies that say you have to take off a minimum of five workdays at a time, there’s a, there is a reason for that, you know. And I understand why some organizations do that, but I also think just mentally, right? Sometimes we need more than an afternoon or a day here or there and to really get yourself out of work mode, you know, and take several days off. So.

Susan White (26:11)
No, I agree. I agree. JoDee, it’s time for in the news. An article on the Federal News Network on June 10th, 2026, by Drew Friedman was entitled “OPM Awards Major HR IT Modernization Contract to Oracle.” It truly caught our attention. First of all, the OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, contract is for $400 million.

JoDee Curtis (26:40)
Holy…

Susan White (26:40)
Big day at Oracle, right? And isn’t that crazy? And it spans over 10 years, which as a taxpayer truly gets my heart racing. But secondly, it shines a light on a major change that is coming in the HR arena for federal government employees. I had recently learned that all federal agencies and institutions have their own HR technology platforms that don’t talk to each other.

And that makes it difficult when federal employees want to, you know, switch agencies, they want to move. It’s a stop and a start every time. There’s no cohesive across the government HR system. Friedman noted in his article that there are 119 systems that will be combined into this new one Oracle system. The estimated cost reduction in running all those systems could be substantial even after spending $400 million to stand it up.

And also I guess even if you go beyond the dollars, I think there’s real opportunities to drive standardization and consistency, which, as we know, could be a real quality of employee experience benefit.

JoDee Curtis (27:55)
Sure, sure.

Susan White (27:56)
What is kind of interesting, which I did not know until I read this article, is that the OPM had initially awarded this mega contract to Workday, another big competitor, right, of Oracle, back in May of 2025. But then the federal government withdrew the contract. The project initial launch was originally set for 2027, but word is that now it’s had to be pushed out further because of the switch to Oracle. So we shall see. Let’s, you know, sit back, get the popcorn, and see how this all rolls out. It’s going to be very interesting again that when the new administration changes in 2028, if this project is going to continue as laid out, because it is a very expensive line item. So it’ll be interesting to watch.

JoDee Curtis (28:38)
Yeah.

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Again, that’s getjoypowered.com slash SHRM to get the code, and it will expire on August 24th, 2027. Thank you for listening and thank you for your dedication to the HR profession. Thanks to all of you for joining us. Please tune in next time and make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan White (29:40)
Thank you.