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DHS/USCIS/PIA-028 Background Vetting Service (BVS)

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March 22, 2010. The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) developed the Background Vetting Service (BVS) to comply with the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, Public Law 109-248 which restricts the ability of any U.S. citizen (USC) or lawful permanent resident alien (LPR) who has been convicted of any "specified offense against a minor" from filing certain family-based immigration petitions. Under the BVS, the USCIS will facilitate fingerprint checks of USCs whose principal residence is overseas filing family-based immigration petitions at Department of State (DOS) Overseas Posts against the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS) and the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT). The information is collected and assembled by DOS. The USCIS BVS does not collect or originate any information but only serves as a conduit to route the information between DOS, US-VISIT, FBI IAFIS, and the USCIS BVS Users. USCIS Conducted this privacy impact assessment (PIA) because BVS checks personally identifiable information (PII) collected by DOS against US-VISIT's IDENT and FBI's IAFIS and returns a status flag back to DOS for their use in the adjudication of the applicable petition.

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Attachment Ext. Size Date
DHS/USCIS/PIA-028 Background Vetting Service (BVS) PDF 278.8 KB
Last Updated: 06/08/2022
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