Almost anyone may complete Section 2 for you — and you answer for every one of them

The obvious one

An HR employee or manager at the hiring location

The default arrangement, and the only one most employers think of as delegation at all. It works because the person completing Section 2 is in the same room as the new hire and the documents, and because there is usually somebody who has been shown how to do it. The risk here is not who is acting — it is that the training happened once, years ago, and the form has been revised since.

The accidental one

A jobsite foreman, crew leader or shift supervisor

This is delegation whether or not anyone called it that. When a framing crew, a field harvest crew or a second-shift production line hires locally and someone on site reviews the documents, that supervisor is acting as the employer's authorized representative and the employer is answerable for the result. Most employers in construction, agriculture and plant work discover this only when an inspector points at eleven Section 2 blocks completed by nine different people in nine different styles.

The remote-hire one

Someone near the employee, when the employee is nowhere near you

Hiring a worker in another state is the classic reason to designate a representative. The rule that makes this workable is that the designation is broad: employers are generally permitted to have any person they designate act on their behalf. The rule that makes it dangerous is that the employer, not the representative, answers for errors. Choosing convenience over competence is a real trade, and it is the employer who pays for it.

The one everybody asks about

A notary public

A notary may generally act as an authorized representative, but not as a notary. There is nothing on the Form I-9 to notarize — the representative completes and signs the certification as the employer's designee, and a notary seal or stamp does not belong on the form. Separately, some states regulate what notaries may charge for or perform in immigration-related matters, and a notary in some jurisdictions may be restricted or required to register before acting. Confirm your state's rule and check with counsel before making a notary your standard practice.

The contractual one

A staffing agency, PEO or third-party service

Where a staffing agency employs the worker, the agency generally completes its own I-9. That is a different arrangement from designating an agency or a service to complete your form, on your behalf, for your employee. The two get conflated constantly, and the conflation is expensive because it usually surfaces as forms that nobody completed — each party believing the other one did. Put in writing which entity is the employer and which entity completes the form.

The one to think twice about

A relative, friend or fellow employee chosen by the new hire

Federal rules on who may serve are permissive, and employers do sometimes end up with the new hire's spouse, neighbour or co-worker completing Section 2 because that is who was available. Nothing about the employer's liability softens because the representative was a volunteer. The employee should not complete Section 2 for themselves, and a representative with a personal stake in the hire is a poor place to put a certification that says original documents appeared genuine.

The representative fills the business fields in with their own details

The certification block asks for the representative's own name, title and signature, but the employer's business name and address. A notary who enters their own firm, or a foreman who enters the jobsite trailer, produces a form that identifies the wrong entity as the employer. In a multi-entity group sharing a payroll service or a trade name, that single field decides which company the form belongs to — and an inspector reconciling forms against a roster will notice when they do not line up.

Nobody physically examined the original documents

The representative's signature certifies personal examination of the originals presented by the employee. A scan emailed ahead, a photo held up on a phone screen, or a video call is not that examination — unless the employer is enrolled in E-Verify and properly using the DHS alternative remote procedure, which is a separate and conditional route rather than a general permission. The two paths get blended in practice: a representative is designated and then does the review over video anyway, which leaves the employer with neither route completed correctly.

The three-day clock keeps running while the representative is arranged

Section 2 is ordinarily due within three business days of the first day of work for pay, and finding somebody willing to act does not pause that. Remote hires are where this fails most often, because the search for a representative starts after the employee has already begun working. Line up who will act before the start date, not after it.

Every site does it differently

Ten locations delegating to ten supervisors with no shared instruction produces ten dialects of the same form: different document combinations requested, different date formats, some blocks left unsigned. Inconsistency is its own finding. It also creates discrimination exposure, because a supervisor improvising about which documents to ask for is exactly how over-documentation and document-specification problems start — the territory covered in the anti-discrimination guide.

Treating delegation as a transfer of responsibility

This is the mistake underneath the other four. The employer remains liable for what its representative certifies, including errors, omissions and anything false. There is no version of this where an outside party absorbs the penalty. Delegation moves the task and keeps the risk, which is why who you designate and how you brief them is a compliance decision rather than an administrative one.

Step 1

Write down who is allowed to act, by role

One short internal rule: which roles may complete Section 2, and who approves an exception. If the honest answer today is whoever is standing there, that is the finding. Naming the roles turns invisible delegation into a controlled one.

Step 2

Give every designated person the same one-page brief

What to examine, that originals must be seen in person, that the employee chooses which documents to present from the acceptable lists, whose business name and address go in the certification block, and that the block must be signed and dated on the day of examination. One page, identical everywhere.

Step 3

Fix the timing before the start date

For any hire who will not be in front of your own staff, identify the representative during onboarding rather than on day three. The deadline is measured from the first day of work for pay, so the arrangement has to exist before the employee starts.

Step 4

Audit the certification block across sites, not just within them

Pull Section 2 for every location and compare the blocks side by side. You are looking for wrong business details, missing titles, unsigned certifications, dates that fall outside the window and document combinations that vary suspiciously by location. Cross-site comparison finds the pattern; a single-site review never does.

Step 5

Correct what is correctable, in the documented way, and date it honestly

The accepted method does not change for a representative's error: strike through the incorrect entry, enter the correct information, initial and date the change, leave the original legible. The person making the correction dates it the day they make it. A certification signed late is a defect; a certification dated to look timely is a much more serious problem.