The United States Customs and Immigrations Service is in the genealogy news again.
On April 19, the USCIS, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, published a request for public comments in the Federal Register under the title “Identifying Barriers Across U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Benefits and Services.” This request is certainly about more than genealogy. The feds are looking for input on the entirety of services offered to immigrants and their families. No matter where you stand on immigration issues, if you’re a genealogist, you should be for open, affordable records for all who seek them.
Genealogists have two main complaints about the USCIS genealogy collection. First is the cost, second is access.
As it stands, it costs $65 dollars per name to search for immigration records. Just for the search. Should the name be found, it would cost another $65 to obtain the records. This is a far cry from the fee increases nearly imposed by the Trump administration. Those hikes would have increased research fees by 146 to 308 percent.
As far as access goes, USCIS has admitted that these records should have already been given to the National Archives. There they would be more accessible to researchers, possibly even digitized for online access. And what better place to hold these historic records then, well, the place where historic records are supposed to be kept? The good people over at Records, Not Revenue have put together an information sheet with all you need to know about the issues surrounding USCIS’ genealogy records.
As of this writing, there were 5,532 comments submitted, but only seven of them had to do with USCIS’s genealogy program. So please, submit your comments to the Federal Rulemaking portal by May 19 (the deadline as listed in the Federal Register is wrong) and refer to docket number USCIS-2021-0004. There’s a possibility that the deadline may be extended, but don’t take that chance. We have the opportunity to make our genealogy research better, and more efficient. Let’s take advantage of it.
Danny Klein is a librarian at the Jersey City Free Public Library’s New Jersey Room and a founding member of the Hudson County Genealogical and Historical Society. He can be reached at hudsongenealogy@gmail.com or @HudsonGenealogy on Twitter.