Our History
- ️Fri Aug 25 2023
Federal oversight of immigration began in 1891, when Congress created the first Office of Immigration in the Treasury Department.
As immigration grew over the following decades, so did the duties of federal immigration employees. By 1906, lawmakers voted to reform the nation’s pathway to citizenship, and the Bureau of Immigration added oversight of naturalization to its responsibilities.
The next major transformation came in 1933, during the Great Depression, when the president ordered the consolidation of federal immigration and naturalization functions into the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). INS oversaw the immigration process, enforcement, and border patrol activities for 70 years until Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002.
On March 1, 2003, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services assumed responsibility for the immigration service functions of the federal government. USCIS was founded to enhance the security and efficiency of national immigration services by focusing exclusively on the administration of benefit applications. The Homeland Security Act created Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection to oversee immigration enforcement and border security.
February 05, 2025
In January 2023, USCIS released a redesigned Permanent Resident Card or “Green Card.” This design contains state-of-the-art technology, including holographic images and optically variable ink. Visually, this Green Card retains much of the previous version’s design (PDF, 1.69 MB), which also featured a red, white, and blue flag on a green background.
February 05, 2025
The Certificate of Naturalization is perhaps the most important of the three naturalization records usually found in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ (USCIS) historic Certificate Files (“C-Files”) because Certificates of Naturalization help protect naturalized persons’ rights as U.S. citizens and the U.S. government from false claims to American citizenship. This study surveys the development of Certificates of Naturalization during the first half of the 20th Century.
Topics
USCIS benefits from a legacy of more than 100 years of federal immigration and naturalization administration. Explore our timelines and read about key turning points in U.S. immigration history.
Read the stories and see photos of people and programs that have made up immigration history from Ellis Island to today.
Our staff tracks the history and implementation of federal immigration and naturalization policies, and we offer reference services to the public. Discover our resources and services.
Looking for an ancestor’s records? Visit our page for information on how to find and request copies of immigration and naturalization records for individuals.
Federal records on immigration and naturalization topics can shed light on key events and issues in the past century of U.S. history. Our webpage can help researchers find pertinent records.
Our webinars offer a way to learn about history through examples of individual stories and the records that preserve them.