Want to Make an Infopass Appointment? New Process is Coming Soon.

According to the American Immigration Lawyer’s Association, USCIS is changing the process for making InfoPass Appointments.  According to their press release:

 

 

AILA has received reports that as part of a new pilot program, select USCIS field offices are anticipated to roll out a new scheduling process for InfoPass appointments that will eliminate self-scheduling of InfoPass appointments online. Under the new pilot program, the scheduling of InfoPass appointments for select USCIS local field offices will instead be coordinated by the USCIS National Customer Service Center. The stated purpose for this new program is to avoid InfoPass appointments being utilized for routine inquiries that can be resolved via the Customer Service Hotline. According to reports, USCIS plans to implement this new pilot program at five local USCIS field offices: Hartford, CT; El Paso, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Sacramento, CA; and San Francisco, CA.

Once the new pilot program is implemented, in order to schedule an InfoPass appointment at one of the above listed USCIS field offices, stakeholders will first need to contact the NCSC by phone (1-800-375-5283), speak to a Tier 1 officer, and request to schedule an InfoPass appointment. The call will then be escalated to a Tier 2 USCIS representative who will confirm that the issue is appropriate for an InfoPass appointment before scheduling the appointment.

USCIS has not yet publicly released information about this new pilot program on the USCIS website and the implementation date of the program at all five of the selected USCIS field offices is not yet confirmed. AILA will continue to monitor the rollout of this new initiative and has reached out to USCIS for additional information on its implementation.

As stated above, USCIS is trying to prevent routine inquiries that it feels can be handled by its customer service call center from going to the local offices.  Thankfully AILA will be monitoring the roll out of the program as it is very clear that USCIS could start to abuse this system by routinely denying appointments and requiring people to go through the customer service call center (which, in many cases, is less than adequate).

We will update you when more information is available.