USCIS Receipt Numbers

When the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) receives an application or petition, it assigns it a 13-character USCIS receipt number on the Form I-797C, Notice of Action. The USCIS receipt number is used by the agency to track and identify cases. The applicant or petitioner may use the USCIS receipt number to make a case inquiry with USCIS.

In this post, I will explain the format for the USCIS receipt number.

The first three characters of the USCIS receipt number correspond to the USCIS service center that received the case and is processing the application or petition. For example, if the application or petition is being processed by the National Benefits Center, the first three characters of the USCIS receipt number will be “NBC.”

The next two numbers will represent the fiscal year in which USCIS received the application or petition. For example, if the application or petition was received in FY 2014, these characters will be “14” on the receipt number.

The next three numbers represent the numbered workday in the fiscal year in which the application or petition was received by USCIS. For example, if the petition was received by USCIS on the 32nd workday of FY 2014, this number would be 032.

Finally, the last five numbers will represent the unique case processing number. The case processing number does not correspond to where or when the application or petition was received by USCIS.

It is important for an applicant or petitioner keep his or her USCIS receipt number handy and ensure that the receipt number corresponds to the correct application or petition.

The USCIS case status page can be found here.