The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) submitted a petition for rulemaking on February 23, 2026, asking the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to amend its regulations governing the U nonimmigrant visa program. Current rules and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) policies have failed to ensure that the program fulfills its statutory purpose and have allowed fraud to perpetuate throughout the program.
Petition for Rulemaking
A petition for rulemaking is a formal request submitted by an individual or organization asking a federal agency to issue, amend, or repeal a regulation. The right to petition for rulemaking is grounded in the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to give interested persons the opportunity to request regulatory action and to consider those requests in a reasoned manner.
With a petition, stakeholders can present legal arguments, policy justifications, and supporting evidence to explain why regulatory change is warranted. Although agencies are not required to grant a petition, they must generally respond, and a denial can be subject to judicial review if it is arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise inconsistent with law. As a result, petitions for rulemaking can be an important mechanism for shaping federal policy and prompting agencies to address regulatory gaps, outdated rules, or new policy issues.
DHS’s U Visa Regulation Undermines the Program’s Integrity
The U visa program was created by Congress in 2000 to help law enforcement agencies detect, investigate, and prosecute crimes by offering legal status to unlawfully present victims of serious crimes who might otherwise be reluctant to have contact with authorities, in exchange for their cooperation. Congress set an annual cap of 10,000 visas per year for “principal aliens” (not including the spouses, children, or parents who can also be sponsored by the principal alien). In practice, the program has become a target for fraud, misuse, and frivolous applications by aliens seeking to gain a path to lawful residency that they would not qualify for otherwise. As of June 2025, there were more than 416,000 U visa applications pending review with USCIS, 250,000 of them for principal applicants and 166,000 for family members.
In our petition, CIS explained that current DHS rules do little to guard against program abuse, and government investigations have shown that the program is failing to fulfill its statutory purpose. To address these concerns, CIS recommended that DHS amend 8 C.F.R.§ 214.14 to:
- Define that statutory term “helpful or likely to be helpful” to, consistent with other statutory requirements, exclude cases in which the qualifying criminal activity is not subject to an active investigation, the criminal case is closed, or the application has been certified by a law enforcement agency that does not have jurisdiction to investigate or prosecute the qualifying criminal activity;
- Require adjudicators to determine whether a U visa petition is connected to an active or reasonably anticipated investigation or prosecution, absent exceptional circumstances;
- Establish a regulatory validity period for Form I-918, Supplement B certifications (e.g., 18 months), after which certifications must be revalidated if adjudication has not occurred;
- Repeal provisions authorizing the issuance of “interim benefits”, including deferred action and work authorization, to petitioners who have not established a viable claim or undergone sufficient background checks;
- Require U nonimmigrant visa petitioners to be interviewed to confirm the veracity of the evidence and information provided in their application; and
- End USCIS’s policy of maintaining a waitlist, in addition to other regulatory changes.
Finally, in addition to regulatory changes, CIS recommended that USCIS create an online filing system for U nonimmigrant visa certifications; implement an enhanced review process for applications certified in jurisdictions with certification rules that conflict with federal law; end its policy of granting deferred action and work authorization solely based on the filing of a complete U nonimmigrant visa application; and create a law enforcement agency engagement program to educate certifying officers about how the program operates and to solicit feedback on how the program could better serve its statutory purpose. Altogether, CIS believes these changes will both make U nonimmigrant visa benefits more accessible to bona fide victims and reduce program abuse, consistent with congressional intent.