by Nij Martin
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has quietly rolled out a significant policy change that will affect hundreds of thousands of immigration applicants: photographs used in immigration documents can now only be reused if they were taken within the past three years. This marks a dramatic shift from pandemic-era practices and signals a broader tightening of the immigration system focused on enhanced security and fraud prevention. Effective immediately, USCIS has issued new guidance limiting the age of foreign nationals’ photos that can be used to create immigration documents to no more than three years, and perhaps more significantly, self-submitted photos will no longer be accepted at all. Only photos taken by USCIS or other authorized entities will be used going forward. This means that even if you submitted a perfectly good passport-style photo with your application, USCIS won’t use it. The agency wants complete control over the image capture process to ensure every photo used in a secure document is recent, accurate, and reliable. According to USCIS, these are “key requirements to preventing fraud and identity theft.”
The answer to why this change happened now lies in a combination of security concerns and the end of COVID-era flexibilities. During the pandemic, USCIS relaxed biometric requirements to reduce in-person appointments, which led to a situation where some applicants received secure documents with photos that could be up to 22 years old—images that no longer resembled their current appearance. USCIS officials noted that physical features can change significantly over time, particularly across long immigration timelines, complicating identity verification efforts. After the pandemic, USCIS initially introduced a complex age-based system in September 2024 that allowed photos to remain valid for up to 10 years for applicants 26 and older, but this proved cumbersome. The new three-year limit simplifies everything while addressing what USCIS describes as vulnerabilities that were “kept in place longer than necessary.”
The practical impact is straightforward: more people will need to attend biometrics appointments at Application Support Centers, even if they recently applied for another immigration benefit. Certain forms will always require fresh biometric collection, regardless of when your last photo was taken, including Form N-400 (Application for Naturalization), Form I-90 (Application to Replace Permanent Resident Card), and Form I-485 (Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status). For immigration applicants, this means adjusting expectations and planning for possible delays, as new biometrics appointments can affect processing timelines. Employers sponsoring foreign workers will also need to incorporate biometrics into onboarding timelines, as work authorization renewals may now involve new appointments where they previously didn’t. This policy change doesn’t exist in isolation—it’s part of a broader administrative shift that includes new immigration filing fees taking effect January 1, 2026, and proposed rules requiring green card and visa applicants to disclose social media handles. Whether you see this as necessary security or additional bureaucracy, one thing is clear: the days of decade-old immigration photos are over.