Kingsfield · Research · Immigration

What is an employer's legal duty to verify a new hire's work authorization, and what makes hiring an unauthorized worker unlawful?

Published 2026-06-23 · U.S. federal law

8 U.S.C. § 1324a makes it unlawful to knowingly hire an alien not authorized to work and requires every employer to verify each new hire's identity and employment authorization through the I-9 attestation process.

The answer

The verification duty

8 U.S.C. § 1324a makes it unlawful for a person to hire, or to recruit or refer for a fee, an alien knowing the alien is unauthorized to work, and it requires the employer to attest, on a form, that it has verified the individual's identity and employment authorization by examining acceptable documents.

The good-faith standard

The statute sets a verification system the employer must follow for every hire. An employer that complies in good faith with the I-9 attestation requirements establishes an affirmative defense to a charge that it knowingly hired an unauthorized alien.

The judged input

What the AI drafted

Submitted to the judge

This is an excerpt from a draft I-9 compliance advisory memo — the kind of work product a lawyer generates with a legal-AI drafting tool, then has to stand behind. Kingsfield does not write it; it rules on the citations the model put in it. This draft cites two authorities; one of them is wrong.

AI draft excerpt — I-9 compliance advisory memo

We advise the Company that federal law imposes an affirmative verification duty on every hire, not merely a prohibition on knowingly employing unauthorized workers. Under 8 U.S.C. § 1324a, it is unlawful to hire an alien knowing the alien is unauthorized, and the employer must attest that it has verified each new hire's identity and employment authorization through the I-9 process. The Company should note that the prohibition on hiring unauthorized aliens and the I-9 verification mandate are codified at 8 U.S.C. § 1324b. Consistent good-faith compliance with the I-9 requirements provides an affirmative defense to a knowing-hire charge.

The judge ruled on every citation as the draft used it — it accepted 8 U.S.C. § 1324a and rejected 8 U.S.C. § 1324b. Here is why.

The verdict

How Kingsfield ruled

Ruled 2026-06-23

Each citation in the draft above was submitted to the Kingsfield judge and ruled against the primary-law corpus — Accept, Reject, or Inconclusive, per citation. These are live verdicts, not editorial. Each card shows the claim the draft made and the verbatim authority the verdict was rendered against.

Accept8 U.S.C. § 1324a

The draft claimed: It is unlawful to hire, or recruit or refer for a fee, an alien knowing the alien is unauthorized to work, and the employer must verify and attest to each new hire's identity and employment authorization through the I-9 process.

“§ 1324a It is unlawful for a person or other entity—”

Cite found; proposition supported by the cited text.

Reject8 U.S.C. § 1324b

The draft claimed: Section 1324b is the provision that prohibits hiring unauthorized aliens and imposes the I-9 employment-verification duty on employers.

Cite found, but the cited text does not support the claim. 8 U.S.C. 1324b prohibits unfair immigration-related employment practices, including citizenship-status and national-origin discrimination and document abuse; the unlawful-employment prohibition and the I-9 verification duty are at 8 U.S.C. 1324a. Regenerate with the correct authority.

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This page is legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. The draft shown is an illustration of a typical AI answer; verdicts reflect the cited authority in the Kingsfield corpus as of the ruling date shown above.