USCIS has announced that it is beta testing a web-based tool – Validation Instrument for Business Enterprises (VIBE) – designed to enhance the agency’s adjudications of certain employment-based immigration petitions by using commercially available data to validate basic information about companies or organizations petitioning to employ a foreign worker.

VIBE will relieve some burdens associated with USCIS’s paper-intensive petition review process by allowing its service centers to electronically receive information about a petitioning entity (e.g., current physical address, ownership, and legal status) from an independent information provider (IIP).

Although VIBE does not completely remove paper from the adjudication process, it could potentially decrease the time and resources that petitioners expend to comply with initial filing requirements or Requests for Evidence (RFEs). However, for employers to completely take advantage of VIBE, they will need to ensure that information is complete and up-to-date with Dun & Bradstreet, the agency’s IIP.

USCIS notes that it will not deny a petition based upon information from VIBE without first giving the petitioner an opportunity to respond to USCIS’s concerns. Accordingly, petitioners now might receive RFEs related to VIBE information.