United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) announced that effective March 23, 2023, the service’s deadline extension policy initially instated in March 2020 will be terminated. As of March 23, 2023, petitioners and applicants no longer have an additional sixty days to respond to agency requests. Instead, responses must be addressed by the deadline specified in the USCIS notice.

For the past three years, USCIS implemented a sixty-day deadline extension policy for responses to various agency actions to assist applicants, petitioners, and requestors who were responding to Requests for Evidence, Notices of Intent to Deny, Notices of Intent to Revoke, among other responses. The extension granted responders an additional sixty-days from the deadline given on the USCIS notice to answer agency requests, in consideration of COVID related complications. In addition, the Service announced petitioners and foreign nationals will also no longer have up to ninety-days to file a Form I-290B appeal or motion or Form N-336 hearing request to reopen a USCIS decision that is issued after March 23, 2023. This deadline too has reverted to the timeline listed in the form instructions.

One flexibility that will remain in place is the reproduced signature flexibility which allows scanned signatures to be accepted by the Service, made permanent policy in July 2022. However, as our government ends the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency on May 11, 2023 we expect more updates from USCIS regarding its pandemic response policies and we will continue to update you.