Who Can Complete Section 2 of the I-9 for a Remote Employee? Any Person You Choose — Within Three Business Days

Key takeaways

• The clock decides everything else. Federal regulation gives an employer three business days from the hire to examine the documents and complete Section 2. Once you see that first, "who can do it" stops being an eligibility question and becomes a scheduling one.
• Physical presence is the default. The USCIS employer handbook: "In general, you or your authorized representative must review the employee's documentation in their physical presence."
• USCIS writes the permission affirmatively: "You may designate, hire, or contract with any person you choose" to complete Section 2 on your behalf — and it adds that it "does not require you to have a contract or other specific agreement" with that person.
• The condition is presence with your new hire, not your own location. The examination happens "in their physical presence" — so what you're looking for is someone who can be in the room with your employee, inside the window.
• The same paragraph states its own limits: an employee cannot act as their own representative; a notary used this way "is not acting in the capacity of a notary" and "should not provide a notary seal"; and "you are liable for any violations … including any violations committed by the authorized representative."
• Live video examination exists — and it is not a 2026 development. It has been available since August 1, 2023 to employers who participate in E-Verify in good standing, and the notice authorizing it says it "does not expire."
• It is not a guarantee that nobody has to be in the room. The same notice: qualified employers "must allow employees who are unable or unwilling to submit documentation using the alternative procedure to submit documentation for physical examination." The employee can decline it, and the three business days don't move when they do.
• Enrolling has a location condition of its own, and it attaches to a role rather than to you: "All E-Verify program administrators must be physically located in the United States" — while general users are a recommendation, not a requirement.
• The copy rule reverses between the two paths. Examining in person: "copies … are not acceptable." Examining remotely: looking at copies is step one, and keeping a copy is step four.
• Section 2 ends with an address field, and USCIS's instruction for it asks for a physical address and says employers "may not enter a P.O. box."

Who can complete Section 2 of the I-9 for a remote employee: the short answer

You can — or any person you designate. The USCIS handbook for employers (M-274), § 2.0, puts it as a permission rather than a set of qualifications:

"You may designate, hire, or contract with any person you choose to complete, update or make corrections to Section 2 or Supplement B, Reverification and Rehire, on your behalf, such as personnel officers, foremen, notaries public, agents, or anyone acting directly or indirectly in your or your agent's interest. This person is known as your authorized representative."

What that permission does not do is move the deadline or lower the standard. In general, whoever does it has to look at the employee's original documents in the employee's physical presence, and it has to happen within three business days of the hire. If you participate in E-Verify in good standing, a second route opens: you may examine the documents remotely, over live video, under a DHS (Department of Homeland Security)-authorized alternative procedure.

So for a founder running a US company from somewhere else, the practical question isn't am I allowed to have someone else do this. It's who will be standing next to my new hire in the first three days, and did I arrange that before the start date.

One assumption before we go further: that you already have the right blank form in front of you. That's a separate question with its own July date, and we handled it in which Form I-9 edition to use in 2026. This brief is about the employer half of the form.

None of what follows is hidden. USCIS, E-Verify and the Federal Register publish all of it. What's easy to miss is the order the pieces apply in — because much of the guidance around this assumes an HR team that is already in the same country as the new hire.

Start with the clock, not with the camera

The rule that sets the shape of this is 8 CFR 274a.2(b)(1)(ii):

"Except as provided in paragraph (b)(1)(viii) of this section, an employer, his or her agent, or anyone acting directly or indirectly in the interest thereof, must within three business days of the hire: (A) Physically examine (or otherwise examine pursuant to an alternative procedure authorized by the Secretary under paragraph (b)(1)(ix) of this section) the documentation presented by the individual establishing identity and employment authorization … and ensure that the documents presented appear to be genuine and to relate to the individual; and (B) Complete section 2 … on the Form I-9 within three business days of the hire and sign the attestation…"

Two things there are worth reading slowly.

First, the sentence names the actor by relationship: the employer, the employer's agent, or anyone acting in the employer's interest. That description is written into the obligation itself rather than offered as a concession — which is why the "who" question resolves so quickly and the "when" question doesn't. (Where employment is for less than three business days, the same section provides that completion happens at the time of hire instead.)

Second, the clock runs from the hire — not from the day your paperwork is ready, or the day your courier lands. If you're the founder and you're somewhere else, those three days are already moving while you decide who to ask.

The default is physical presence — and on that path, a copy isn't a document

M-274 § 4.0 states the default plainly:

"Within three business days of the date employment begins, you or your authorized representative must complete Section 2 by examining original, acceptable, and unexpired documentation, or an acceptable receipt, the employee presents…"

"In general, you or your authorized representative must review the employee's documentation in their physical presence. However, if you participate in E-Verify, you may also be eligible to remotely examine the employee's documents under the alternative procedure authorized by the secretary of homeland security."

And then the sentence that closes off the obvious workaround:

"When physically examining documents, copies, except for certified copies of birth certificates, are not acceptable."

USCIS's I-9 Central page on completing Section 2 says the same thing from the other direction — documents must be "original (except that certified copies of birth certificates are acceptable) or … an acceptable receipt."

So: emailed scans, a photo of a passport in a chat thread, a PDF your new hire uploaded to your onboarding tool — on the physical-examination path, none of those is the thing the rule asks someone to look at. Somebody has to be in the room with the paper.

Two axes, not two doors: who examines × how they examine

This is often presented as a binary — representative or E-Verify. It's cleaner to read it as two independent choices, because the combinations behave differently and one of them is easy to miss.

Read across the bottom row and the useful thing appears: using a representative is not the "offline" option, and E-Verify is not the "do-it-yourself" option. They are separate switches. A qualified employer can still send someone in person — subject to the site-consistency rule below; an employer using the alternative procedure can still have a representative run it.

Then read the whole table with one sentence in mind — from the same handbook paragraph that grants the permission: "You are liable for any violations in connection with the form or the verification process, including any violations committed by the authorized representative acting on your behalf." Nothing in any of the four cells moves that.

"Any person you choose" — and the three things the same paragraph also says

The permission in § 2.0 is generous, but it doesn't arrive alone. The paragraph that grants it also states three limits, and they are the ones that actually come up.

1. The employee can't do it for themselves. "Employees cannot act as authorized representatives for their own Form I-9." That matters more than it sounds like it does, because the tempting shortcut for a distributed team is to have the new hire photograph their own documents and fill in both halves. The handbook closes that door by name.

2. A notary you use here is not acting as a notary. "If you choose to use a notary public as an authorized representative, that person is not acting in the capacity of a notary. This person must perform the same required actions as an authorized representative, including signatures. When acting as an authorized representative, a notary public should not provide a notary seal on Form I-9." Notaries appear on the handbook's own list of examples, so using one is contemplated — but the deliverable is a completed Section 2, not a notarized anything. A stamped I-9 is a signal that the arrangement was misunderstood.

3. The liability doesn't move. Quoted above, and it's the sentence to keep. Delegating the task doesn't delegate the exposure.

There's a fourth line that surprises people in the other direction: "USCIS does not require you to have a contract or other specific agreement with your authorized representative for Form I-9 purposes." You may want one anyway, for your own reasons. But the absence of paperwork between you and the person examining the documents isn't itself the defect.

What qualifications does an authorized representative need — and why that isn't the useful question

The handbook answers the qualification question by describing duties:

"The authorized representative must perform all the employer duties described in the instructions and this handbook, and complete, sign and date Section 2 or Supplement B, Reverification and Rehire, on your behalf."

Which quietly relocates the question. Because the permission is broad and the liability stays with you, "is this person allowed?" is rarely what decides the outcome. What decides it is: will this person actually read the instructions, look at the originals, complete every field, and sign on the correct day?

That's a competence-and-availability question, and it's the one to interrogate when you're choosing between a friend near the employee, a manager at a partner company, a local professional, or a service.

It helps to know what sits behind it. 8 CFR 274a.10(b)(2) provides civil penalties for failing to comply with the verification requirements, assessed per individual with respect to whom the violation occurred — and it directs that the amount take account of "(i) The size of the business of the employer being charged; (ii) The good faith of the employer; (iii) The seriousness of the violation; (iv) Whether or not the individual was an unauthorized alien; and (v) The history of previous violations of the employer."

We're not quoting figures. The amounts in the regulation text are a range rather than a set charge, they're subject to periodic inflation adjustment, and we didn't verify the currently adjusted numbers — so take the structure as the point: it's assessed per individual with respect to whom the violation occurred, the size of the business is one of the listed factors, and good faith is explicitly in the calculus.

The E-Verify route: available since 2023, not new this year

If you'd rather examine the documents yourself, from wherever you are, that route exists — and its vintage is worth being precise about, because in the write-ups we read it often gets framed as though something changed recently. The authorizing notice, published in the Federal Register on July 25, 2023, says:

"DATES: The alternative procedure is available beginning on August 1, 2023."

and

"The alternative procedure described in this document does not expire. However, DHS may amend or cancel it upon the Secretary's determination that doing so is necessary to maintain an equivalent level of security or as a temporary measure to address a public health emergency … or a national emergency…"

So it is a standing procedure with a stated caveat attached, rather than a program with a countdown on it. What it does have is a gate:

"At this time, the alternative procedure is available only to qualified employers, meaning those employers who are participants in good standing, in E-Verify. A participant in good standing in E-Verify is an employer that has enrolled in E-Verify with respect to all hiring sites in the United States that use the alternative procedure; is in compliance with all requirements of the E-Verify program … and continues to be a participant in good standing in E-Verify at any time during which the employer uses the alternative procedure."

Four features of that gate are easy to skim past:

• It's continuous, not a one-time qualification. Good standing has to hold "at any time during which the employer uses the alternative procedure."
• It attaches to hiring sites. The enrollment requirement is written per site. If your company's structure doesn't map neatly onto "sites," that's a question to put to E-Verify before you rely on the procedure, rather than one to settle by assumption.
• It comes with training. USCIS states that "New E-Verify enrollees and users will complete an E-Verify tutorial that includes fraudulent document awareness training."
• It has a location condition — and it lands on a person, not on your passport. E-Verify takes this up in a FAQ with exactly that title: "All E-Verify program administrators must be physically located in the United States, which includes the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands." For the other role it stops short of a requirement: "As a best practice E-Verify recommends, but does not require, E-Verify general users to be physically located in the United States." So the question isn't whether you are in the US — it's who will hold the program administrator role on the account.

There's also a consistency rule that trips people up, and it cuts both ways:

"If you choose to offer the alternative procedure to new employees at an E-Verify hiring site, you must do so consistently for all employees at that site. However, you may choose to offer the alternative procedure for remote hires only but continue to apply physical examination procedures to all employees who work onsite or in a hybrid capacity, so long as you do not adopt such a practice for a discriminatory purpose or treat employees differently based on their citizenship, immigration status, or national origin…"

In other words: you can't hand-pick which individuals get the video option, but you can draw the line at remote-versus-onsite — with the non-discrimination condition attached in the same sentence.

And there is a limit on the whole switch that the consistency rule doesn't cover: the employee can decline. The notice raises it as a question and answers it without qualification:

"If the employee does not want the employer to apply the alternative procedure with respect to that employee, can qualified employers refuse to perform physical document examination? No, qualified employers must allow employees who are unable or unwilling to submit documentation using the alternative procedure to submit documentation for physical examination. Nothing in the alternative procedure prevents an employer from physically examining documents when requested to do so by an employee."

That changes what enrolling actually buys you. It is not insurance against ever needing someone in the room — it's an option you may offer and a new hire may turn down, in which case the physical path is back and the three business days haven't moved. The notice says the same thing from the employer's side a few questions earlier: "Use of this alternative procedure is entirely optional."

The copy asymmetry: the same document, two paths, opposite handling

Here's the detail that reframes the choice, and in what we found it doesn't turn up in the usual summaries.

On the physical path, the handbook states it as a rule with one narrow exception: "copies, except for certified copies of birth certificates, are not acceptable."

On the remote path, M-274 § 4.5 makes examining copies step one:

"Examine copies (front and back, if the document is two-sided) of Form I-9 documents or an acceptable receipt to ensure that the documentation presented reasonably appears to be genuine; Conduct a live video interaction with the individual presenting the document(s)… The employee must first transmit a copy of the document(s) to the employer (per Step 1 above) and then present the same document(s) during the live video interaction; Indicate on the Form I-9, by completing the corresponding box, that an alternative procedure was used…; and Retain a clear and legible copy of the documentation (front and back if the documentation is two-sided)."

So the same artifact — a scan of a passport — is inadmissible on one path and mandatory on the other. Twice, in fact: once as the thing you review in advance, and once as a record you're required to keep.

The reason is visible in the sequence: the copy isn't a substitute for the original. The employee "must first transmit a copy … and then present the same document(s) during the live video interaction." The remote path doesn't drop the look at the real document; it puts a copy in front of that look and another copy behind it. Elsewhere in the handbook USCIS says it outright — employers examining remotely "may accept copies of documentation, but must then view original documentation in a live video interaction." Which is why the intuitive workaround — just have them email me a scan — is not a lighter version of the remote procedure. It's neither procedure.

There's also a box to tick. USCIS: "Check the box in the Additional Information field if you participate in E-Verify and used an alternative procedure to remotely examine your employee's documents." If you use the video route, saying so on the form is part of the route.

If you're the one who isn't in the US

Strip out the mechanics and the founder version is short.

The condition the rule states is presence with the employee — the examination happens "in their physical presence." Your new hire is in the US; that's why there's an I-9 at all. So what you actually need is someone who can reach them, in person, inside the window. In the materials we checked, we found no separate requirement about where the examiner is based — the binding condition is the one about being with the employee, and in practice it lands in the same place: the examination happens where your employee is.

That is a smaller and more solvable problem than "find a US compliance person," and it's a different problem from the one most of the guidance we surveyed is written to answer.

Practically, it leaves a short list of decisions, all of which are better made before the start date than after:

1. Fix the date and count. Three business days from the hire. Write the actual deadline down; it's the number that moves on its own. The window is also wider at the front than most people assume: M-274 says you may complete Section 2 "at any time from the date the employee accepts the job offer and completes Section 1 to within three business days from the date of hire" — so the examination can happen before day one, and scheduling it there is the version of this that doesn't go wrong.
2. Decide the path — and don't treat E-Verify as the escape hatch. Someone physically with the employee, or the alternative procedure if you're already a participant in good standing. Enrolling isn't an instant switch: it involves signing up, completing the required training, and having a program administrator physically located in the US. And even then your new hire can ask for physical examination instead, which puts you back on the first path with the same deadline.
3. Name the person, and brief them properly. They must perform all the employer duties described in the form instructions and the handbook. Send them the instructions, not a summary of the instructions.
4. If they're a notary, say the quiet part first — they're acting as your representative, not as a notary, and no seal goes on the form.
5. Decide what goes in the employer address block before the day, not during it. More on that below.

One boundary sits upstream of all of this: the clock starts at "the hire," so the threshold question is whether the person you're bringing on is an employee at all. Worker classification runs on its own tests and has its own paperwork consequences — we untangled the tax-form side of that boundary in the 1099-K threshold for 2026 versus 1099-NEC. If you're genuinely unsure which side of the line someone falls on, that's a question for counsel before it's a question about forms.

One question the documents we checked don't settle

Being straight about the edges is more useful than filling them in.

What happens to already-completed remote I-9s if you later lose E-Verify good standing? The Federal Register notice conditions the procedure on remaining a participant in good standing "at any time during which the employer uses the alternative procedure," and the companion final rule states the forward-looking half — an enrolled employer not in good standing "is ineligible to use the alternative procedure." Neither takes up the status of examinations completed while you were in good standing, and we're not going to reason our way to an answer. If it's live for you, put it to immigration counsel or to E-Verify directly.

The last box on the form: a physical address, and no P.O. box

Section 2 closes with the employer's own details, and USCIS's I-9 Central instruction for that field is specific:

"Enter the employer's business name and physical address. Employers may not enter a P.O. box as their address. If your company has multiple locations, use the most appropriate address that identifies the location of the employer with respect to the employee and their Form I-9 completion (for example, the address where Form I-9 is completed)."

The employer handbook words the same field a little differently — "Enter the business's physical street address, city or town, state, and ZIP code" — and its multi-location sentence stops before the parenthetical. Both are USCIS; the version quoted above is the one that says where to look when you have more than one address.

Two observations for a company being run from outside the country.

The multi-location instruction points at "the address where Form I-9 is completed" — a sensible tiebreaker for an employer with offices, and a genuinely open question when the completion happened wherever your representative met your employee. The guidance we're quoting is written for the multiple-locations case; it doesn't reach the situation of a single-location company whose representative examined documents in a city you have no presence in. That's worth resolving with counsel rather than guessing at, especially if you're about to write the same address onto every form you file from here on.

And the explicit exclusion is narrow, so read it literally: what this instruction rules out by name is a P.O. box. Whether a particular address arrangement satisfies "physical address" for this field is not a question the USCIS materials we checked take up — so we're not going to tell you that it does.

What we will say is the ordinary version. A first US hire is usually the moment a company stops being one person with a laptop and becomes an entity that agencies, insurers and providers write to. If the address on your filings is a former coworking desk or a friend's apartment, this is a better week to fix it than the week you find out. For the US side of that, our partner save office handles addresses and mail — Auteur doesn't operate the US service directly — and there's an overview on our US virtual office page.

FAQ

Can an employer verify I-9 documents for a remote employee? Yes, by one of two routes. Either someone examines the original documents in the employee's physical presence — you, or an authorized representative you designate — or, if you participate in E-Verify in good standing, you use the DHS-authorized alternative procedure to examine the documents remotely over a live video interaction. USCIS's I-9 Central states it as a default with an exception: "Employers must physically examine documents, except, employers that participate in E-Verify may use an alternative procedure authorized by the Secretary of DHS to remotely examine documents." Either way, Section 2 has to be completed within three business days of the hire.

Can a family member, spouse, or parent complete Section 2 as my authorized representative? USCIS's handbook frames this as a permission you hold: "You may designate, hire, or contract with any person you choose … such as personnel officers, foremen, notaries public, agents, or anyone acting directly or indirectly in your or your agent's interest." Those examples are roles rather than a closed list, and the person that paragraph names as ineligible is the employee themselves — "Employees cannot act as authorized representatives for their own Form I-9." Since the same paragraph puts the liability on you, the real filter isn't who is permitted; it's who will read the instructions, examine the originals, complete every field, and sign on the right date. A relative of the employee is an awkward choice for exactly that reason.

Does the authorized representative have to be a notary — and if I use one, do they notarize the form? Notaries appear on USCIS's list of examples, but they are one option among several, and the handbook is explicit about the capacity they act in: "that person is not acting in the capacity of a notary," and "a notary public should not provide a notary seal on Form I-9." The job is to perform the same required actions as any authorized representative, including the signature. If a form comes back with a notarial seal on it, something in the arrangement was misunderstood.

Who signs Section 2, and what do I put in the title field? The person who examined the documents signs — M-274 § 4.0 pairs the two acts explicitly: "The same person who examined the employee's documents must also complete the fields in the certification block, then sign and date Section 2." The handbook adds that the authorized representative "must perform all the employer duties described in the instructions and this handbook, and complete, sign and date Section 2 … on your behalf." On the wording of the certification fields themselves, the materials we checked describe the role rather than prescribing a job title — so use the current form instructions from I-9 Central as the authority for what belongs in each field, rather than a summary like this one.

If my authorized representative fills it in wrong, who is liable? You are. The handbook says so in the same paragraph that grants the permission: "You are liable for any violations in connection with the form or the verification process, including any violations committed by the authorized representative acting on your behalf." That's also why "USCIS does not require you to have a contract" is less reassuring than it first sounds: no agreement is needed to appoint someone, and the liability sentence isn't conditioned on whether one exists.

I'm outside the United States — can I examine the documents myself over video? The route the documents describe for examining remotely is the alternative procedure, and it requires that you participate in E-Verify in good standing. USCIS: "You must participate in E-Verify in good standing if you want to remotely examine your employee's documents." E-Verify addresses the location half of your question directly, in a FAQ titled Must E-Verify users be located inside the United States?: "All E-Verify program administrators must be physically located in the United States," while general users are a recommendation — "E-Verify recommends, but does not require" it. So the condition attaches to a role on the account rather than to where you personally sit. (A separate E-Verify FAQ, written in 2014 for foreign companies working under a federal contract with the FAR E-Verify clause, states that "USCIS only allows companies located in the United States to enroll in E-Verify" and that such an employer "would need to have a presence in the United States." That one is scoped to FAR contractors and is over a decade old — treat it as a reason to confirm your own situation with E-Verify rather than as the general rule.) Two things to keep in view either way: enrolling isn't instant, and your employee can still ask for physical examination. If your first start date is days away, designating someone who can be physically present is the realistic path.

Which address goes in Section 2 if my representative examined the documents in another city? USCIS's instruction is to enter the employer's business name and physical address, states that employers "may not enter a P.O. box," and — for companies with multiple locations — points to "the most appropriate address that identifies the location of the employer with respect to the employee and their Form I-9 completion (for example, the address where Form I-9 is completed)." That guidance is written for the multiple-locations case. It doesn't speak directly to a one-location company whose representative met the employee somewhere else, so if that's your situation, get a view from counsel rather than inferring one from the multi-location example.

Bottom line

The question sounds like a permissions question and is actually a logistics question. USCIS grants the permission in one sentence — "any person you choose" — and then spends the rest of the page on the parts that bind: three business days from the hire, original documents, in the employee's physical presence unless you're an E-Verify participant in good standing using the alternative procedure, and liability that stays with you no matter who holds the pen.

For a founder whose company is American and whose desk isn't, that collapses into one thing to act on: decide, before the start date, who will be in the room with your new hire. The E-Verify route is worth having — but it is not a way around that decision. It needs a program administrator physically in the US, it takes enrollment and training to get, and the employee it's meant for can decline it and ask for physical examination anyway. USCIS grants the permission by relationship rather than by credential, and it says outright that no contract is required — in the materials we checked, nothing attaches a license or a job title to the role. What the person does need is to be reachable, reliable, and there.

This is general information about federal employment eligibility verification procedures, not legal advice. Agency handbooks and instructions are revised — confirm current requirements on USCIS's I-9 Central, and take questions about your own hires, your worker classifications, or your E-Verify status to a qualified professional.