What all does the USCIS Immigration Background check look at?

[corvusheart 163]

First of all, I have a totally clean record and so does my foreign fiance, but I was just merely curious what does the background check look at with the petitioner? Because I know during the Initial Review stage it says it performs the background check on the petitioner.

[LC2016 15]

First of all, I have a totally clean record and so does my foreign fiance, but I was just merely curious what does the background check look at with the petitioner? Because I know during the Initial Review stage it says it performs the background check on the petitioner.

I'm glad you asked! I have been wondering the same thing, seem like they have been checking my background for the last 6 months.

[NigeriaorBust 4,087]

History of violent acts against others, child predator tax liens ( if you owe too much taxes they have reduce your income by the amount owed unless you are on a payment plan )

[TBoneTX 45,910]

*** Thread moved from K-1 Process forum to the USCIS Service Centers forum -- topic involves processing-policies in general. ***

[lost_at_sea 995]

FBI background checks and checking out previous petitions, as far as I know, and I think they look up stuff with the IRS - but I don't suppose they want to tell *precisely* what they do.  I wonder if anyone's ever done a FOI to find out. Hmm...

It's mostly about the petitioner, anyway, since it's all stuff they can get from inside the USA - that's why they need police certificates from the beneficiary at the interview stage instead too.

If they find something dodgy about the petitioner, they can reveal it to the beneficiary (look up "IMBRA").

For what it's worth - they're not running background checks for the entire time your petition is at a service centre. It's sat in a pile for most of the time, then they do a the lookups when your cases lands on someone's desk.

Edited February 17, 2014 by lost_at_sea

[JulieandDanny 7]

does anyone reckon the petitioner background checks would take longer if the petitioner had lived for a few years in the uk as well? I was abroad on study and post-study visas for 4 of the last five years (been back stateside for almost a year now)... will i have to wait for them to check international channels on me?

i suppose the ?s here may be fish in a barrel though- of course they wouldn't want us to know in detail what they actually check