The Department of Homeland Security and... Genealogy

As part of its duty the Department of Homeland Security keeps track of immigrants coming into the country.  Not only do they have the records that are already public (on sites like they ancestry.com), but they have records that are not currently available.

They have a Genealogical program to make many of these records available to the public.  As they say on their website:

"The USCIS Genealogy Program is authorized to make five (5) series of the agency’s historical records available to requesters. They are:

• Naturalization Certificate Files (C-Files), September 27, 1906 to March 31, 1956
• Alien Registration Forms (Form AR-2), August 1940 to March 1944
• Visa Files, July 1, 1924 to March 31, 1944
• Registry Files, March 1929 to March 31, 1944
• A-Files, April 1, 1944 to May 1, 1951

While those files are open to the public, one needs to have an individual's record number. Most of us won't know the number of the person we are looking for, which is why the allow you to submit a record search where they look for their ID number and information about the number and type of records that they have."

It costs $20 to submit a search with the expectation that it will take about 3 months to get the information. On their website, they answer some FAQs and allow you to submit the index search. Deb and I have requested searches for Andrew and Joseph.