Request for Evidence
request issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to petitioners for residency, citizenship, family visas, and employment visas
A Request for Evidence (RFE) is a request issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to petitioners for residency, citizenship, family visas, and employment visas. Examples of petitions for which a RFE may be issued are Form I-129 (alien worker authorization), Form I-140 (immigrant worker authorization), and Form I-130 (family visas).
The RFE is intended for use in cases where the adjudicator (the person evaluating the petition) believes that there is not enough evidence to approve the petition, but also believes that the petition may be redeemable, and that there is no clear factual or statutory basis for denial.
The RFE, when used, should be as clear as possible about what types of additional evidence are needed to fill in the gap, and what inconsistencies or problems have been found in the evidence submitted so far. It is not intended for use for the adjudicator's reassurance in cases where there is enough evidence to approve the petition. It is sent to, and the response must be sent by, the petitioner (or the attorney representing the petitioner, in cases where the petition is filed through an attorney) rather than the beneficiary.
Related communications
Differences with NOID
The following are some key differences between the RFE and the Notice of Intent to Deny (NOID):
Likelihood of denial: The RFE is issued when there is significant uncertainty about whether the petition will be approved, whereas the NOID is generally used when a denial is quite likely.
Accompanying information: A RFE comes with a list of additional types of evidence needed. A NOID comes equipped with a list of reasons for denial. While the two lists are somewhat related (insofar as a reason for denial translates to a piece of evidence that could overturn the denial) they have different framings.
The public source identifies “Request for Evidence” as request issued by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to petitioners for residency, citizenship, family visas, and employment visas. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Request, Evidence and request.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 26, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q7314798. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Request for Evidence” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.