Section 335(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act has always said that the government shall investigate every naturalization applicant, in the vicinity of their residence and employment, unless the Secretary of Homeland Security waives it. For more than thirty years the waiver was general. The old INS stopped conducting neighborhood investigations around 1991, relying instead on FBI checks and biometrics, and a 2000 Inspector General report treated the practice as history.
On August 22, 2025, USCIS ended the general waiver. Policy Memorandum PM-602-0189, "Resumption of Personal Investigations of Aliens Applying for Naturalization," was posted on August 26 and took effect immediately. It is the second of the summer's three naturalization memos, sitting between the good moral character memo of August 15 and the voter registration and false claims alert of August 29.
What the statute covers
The investigation covers at least the five years before the N-400 was filed, and its stated purpose is to corroborate four things: residence, good moral character, attachment to the principles of the Constitution, and disposition to the good order and happiness of the United States. The last two phrases are 1790 vintage and have rarely been tested in a living room.
Between 1802 and 1981 applicants had to produce two witnesses at their hearing. Congress abolished that in 1981 on the reasoning that character was better established by investigation than by testimony. It was not, in the event, established by either; the investigations faded within a decade. The memo simply revives the statutory default.
What the memo does
It does not order an investigation in every case. USCIS decides whether to investigate or waive "on an individualized discretionary basis" after reviewing the file. The Policy Manual has not yet been amended to say how, and as of February 2026 there is no published guidance beyond the memo itself.
The memo does say what evidence will help it decide to waive. USCIS may request testimonial letters from neighbors, employers, co-workers and business associates who know the applicant, and filing them with the N-400 "can assist USCIS in determining whether a waiver is appropriate" without a request for evidence. It also says the opposite in plain terms: failure or refusal to provide such evidence may lead to an investigation, and may affect eligibility. No number of letters is specified anywhere.
What is happening in practice
By January 2026 immigration lawyers were reporting that officers had begun visiting applicants at home without notice. The visits reported so far concentrate on marriages to citizens, which is not surprising; a marriage is the one fact about an applicant that a neighbor can genuinely corroborate or contradict. Home visits have also been reported for permanent resident applicants, not only naturalization cases. AILA has been collecting examples from members. USCIS has published no statistics, and no lawsuit has yet challenged the memo.
What to do
- Make the N-400's five-year history exact. Every address, every employer, with dates. That is the period an investigator would cover, and an inconsistency between the form and what a landlord remembers is the easiest way to turn a routine case into a difficult one.
- File letters with the application. Two or three from people who genuinely know you: a neighbor of several years, an employer, a colleague. Brief, specific, signed, with contact details. The memo says this is how you earn a waiver.
- Answer any request for evidence. Refusal is named in the memo as a trigger. If USCIS asks for testimonial letters, produce them.
- Prepare the household. Anyone in a marriage-based case should assume a knock is possible. Both spouses should be able to answer ordinary questions about the marriage without rehearsal and without contradiction.
- Know the courtesies. You may ask unannounced officers for their names, agency and contact details, and you may have counsel present for questioning. Neither is a refusal to cooperate.
The memo's premise is that a file cannot tell an officer whether a person actually lives where they say and is who they claim to be. That is true. It has always been true. What is new is the willingness to send someone to check, and for the honest applicant the answer is to make the checking easy.