There are a few different reasons someone will want a background check, and a few different types of background checks that can be done on a person.
You may be asked to provide any one of several of these checks to a potential employer, or conduct them AS a potential employer on your prospective employees.
There are varying degrees of digging that employers will do, and for the last few years under the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and its Immigrations and Customs Enforcement or ICE division, background checks on your citizenship or legal working status as part of the checks they perform before hiring prospective employees.
There are penalties for those who hire illegal workers under their payrolls, and likewise for those who falsely declare they are able to work legally when they are, in fact, not.
The reason for background checks, then, in this instance, is to protect the employer from the possibility of hiring someone under false pretenses or who may be deceptive in their representation of their working status for other purposes.
In this case, screening for immigration documents and legal working status protects the employer from hiring someone who is illegally working, and could put their company in jeopardy if this were found out.
There are even companies that can store information needed on legal working statuses for people in the US for you, making these background checks far more simple and easy to do, with minimal hassle and less potential for deception and trying to get around the documentation, from those trying to work illegally.
There are now laws stating that companies must have government Form I-9 documents on hand in their personnel files at all times, in light of immigration raids and the tightening up of laws to enforce this.
The potential for both the companies hiring illegally working employees and for those employees who may be unfamiliar with the laws is thereby lessened with these kind of screening processes.
The fact that everyone is informed can help to negate the harshness of immigration raids and provide the guidance an employer or potential employee may need in dealing with these issues.
Background checks are consequently not only a failsafe for the employer, but they are also beneficial to an employee who may not have all the information he or she needs to start working.
Both are covered in the quest for all the right information.