I-9 Means I-m Looking the Other Way
I’m not for illegal immigration.
But before we spend hundreds of billions of dollars on enforcement campaigns, walls, drones, detention centers, and another round of immigration laws, we ought to stop and ask a basic question:
What tools do we already have in the drawer — and why aren’t we using them?
Let’s start with one we’ve had for almost 40 years: the I-9 form.
The I-9 is the document every employer is required to complete to verify that a new hire is legally authorized to work in the United States.
It was meant to prevent illegal employment. But it doesn’t. And everyone knows it.
I-9 isn’t about enforcement. It’s about CYA.
And I-9 doesn’t mean “I verified.” It means I-m looking the other way.
They’re Not All Outside Home Depot
Let’s stop pretending undocumented immigrants are all standing around outside Home Depot, waiting for a day job in a pickup truck. That’s not what’s happening.
They’re working for registered businesses — on payroll, with paperwork, inside the system.
They’re not hiding. They’re clocking in.
They’re working on farms, in restaurants, on construction crews, in hotels, in kitchens, in laundries, and in warehouses. They’re filing tax forms, sometimes under borrowed names or fake Social Security numbers. And many of them have a signed I-9 on file — filled out by someone who didn’t want to look too closely.
This is the part we pretend not to see.
What the I-9 Actually Does
Here’s how it works:
The worker hands over documents — sometimes fake, sometimes borrowed.
The employer looks them over. As long as they “appear valid,” they’re accepted.
The form gets signed, filed, and forgotten.
That’s it.
The I-9 form does not require employers to confirm that the documents are authentic — just that they’re not obviously fake.
So as long as nobody asks too many questions, the company is off the hook.
It’s not enforcement.
It’s plausible deniability on government paper.
We Could Use It Honestly — But Don’t
The I-9 could work. But we don’t want it to.
Because if we used it honestly — if we actually tried to stop unauthorized work — the system would start breaking in very visible ways.
Still, if we were serious, we could:
Make E-Verify mandatory
Penalize employers who accept obviously fraudulent documents
Hold companies accountable for labor outsourced to contractors
Modernize work authorization with secure, digital identity
We already have the legal framework.
We already have the technology.
We just choose not to use it.
Why Would They Stay If They Can’t Work?
Here’s the part nobody wants to say out loud:
People don’t come here to hang out.
They come here to work.
If we actually enforced I-9 — not as a box-checking exercise, but as a real barrier to illegal employment — many people here illegally would leave on their own.
No agents. No raids. No buses.
If you can’t work, you can’t stay. That’s true in any country.
We don’t need to deport millions of people. We just need to enforce the system we already have — and stop pretending I-9 means anything other than I-m not going to look too hard.