[politicalwit]

"I do not want to give business the duty and responsibility to investigate legal status."

Your HR friends are obviously extremely inept. If you read the government requirements of the I-9 you would know that copies of the original document are required by law. You don't transpose numbers when you make copies.

[Once-Ler]

I don't want some employer making assumptions and firing an employee because the employee is hispanic and he transposed 2 numbers in his SSN.

My HR friends didn't say this. I did, and its obviously a hastely concieved point. Thank you for correcting me.

There are other reasons to not want employers given the responsibility and power of investigating the legal status of applicants. One of which is making private citizens responsible for criminal investigation?

My general point was that legitimite businesses are complying with the law and submitting the identification provided by the applicant. If the government fails to identify forged document or worse fails to investigate suspected documents that is not the fault of the business.