If foreign national employees have recently experienced trouble scheduling INFOPASS appointments, it may be because USCIS is preparing for an expected rollout of a new pilot program over the next couple of months. Instead of standard self-service online scheduling of appointments, the National Customer Service Center (NCSC) first will be coordinating scheduling for five selected District Offices.  The American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) announced that USCIS plans to institute this program to avoid INFOPASS appointments for issues that it believes could be resolved by NCSC.  Only after individuals seeking an appointment speak to two tiers of officers will NCSC decide if an INFOPASS appointment should be scheduled.  It seems that the five pilot offices will be Hartford, Connecticut; El Paso, Texas; Jacksonville, Florida; and Sacramento and San Francisco, California.

There has not yet been an official announcement from USCIS but Jackson Lewis will continue to follow this situation.