U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officially restarted neighborhood investigations for citizenship applicants after dropping the practice 35 years ago, according to a policy alert published by the agency.
“By resuming neighborhood investigations, USCIS will scrutinize: alien’s residency, good moral character, attachment to the U.S. Constitution & disposition to the good order & happiness of the United States,” USCIS wrote in an X post on Aug. 29.
The policy went into effect immediately after being announced on Aug. 25.
Neighborhood investigations were abandoned in 1991 after USCIS, previously called the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), decided to rely almost exclusively on FBI criminal history checks and other organizations to confirm that the applicant had a “good moral character.”…