Over the years, we have encountered a lot of clients who are uncertain about what their status is. We have had clients who were brought into the country as children, and do not know what their parents did (or did not do) to fix their status. Other times, clients have had an interaction with immigration enforcement, but are not sure exactly what happened because they didn’t understand.
To find out what your status is, you may need information that is contained in your government immigration record, which is called an alien file. There are also several government databases that contain information about your entries and exits from the country, any applications you were a part of, and any times you have interacted with immigration enforcement.
ℹ️ Clients often need to get a copy of these records in order to explain something that is unknown about their immigration history, to determine where they stand.
🕐 It can take several months to get the FOIA responses from the government.
Since August 2026, USCIS does not have to ask you for missing evidence before denying an application. What that means for your filing.