Somewhere in the United States, a consulting firm sat down and filed roughly 3,000 Form I-140 petitions for foreign workers. Every single one carried the same authorized signature. Not because 3,000 people happened to sign identically. Because someone copied a signature image from one filing and pasted it onto every other.

That story is not a rumor. It appears on page 25482 of the Federal Register notice USCIS published on May 11, 2026, announcing a new interim final rule on signatures. The same notice describes another case where the authorized signatory signed a single blank sheet of paper and had a subordinate paste that signature onto at least 20 separate I-129 petitions. The USCIS Administrative Appeals Office has reviewed 758 appeals of denials based on copied signatures alone.

The agency has clearly had enough. Effective July 10, 2026, USCIS officers will have explicit regulatory authority to do something they could not do before: when they catch an invalid signature after a petition has already been accepted, they can deny the petition and keep the fee.

For self-petitioners building EB-2 NIW or EB-1A cases, the practical stakes are steep. A defective signature on the wrong form could now cost your entire filing package.

What the Rule Actually Changes

Before the new rule, USCIS could reject a petition with a bad signature at intake, send the package back, and refund the fee. If the bad signature was not caught at intake and made it into adjudication, the agency’s authority to deny outright was murky. Officers handled it inconsistently. Some accepted the fee, denied the case, and provided appeal rights. Others sent it back as a rejection. The Federal Register notice describes the policy patchwork in detail.

The new rule amends 8 CFR 103.2(a)(7)(ii)(A) to make the choice explicit. When USCIS finds an invalid signature after accepting a petition, the adjudicator has two options.

Reject the request. The fee comes back. The applicant can refile a corrected petition. This is generally the response when the defect appears inadvertent or is caught quickly.

Deny the request. USCIS keeps the fee. The petition is treated as fully adjudicated. The applicant either files Form I-290B Notice of Appeal or Motion ($800) within 30 days, or starts over with a fresh petition and a fresh fee.

The rule does not change how USCIS handles signature defects caught at intake. Those still come back with the fee. The change matters because USCIS, by its own admission, cannot catch most invalid signatures at intake. The agency processes roughly 13 million benefit requests a year and has not been able to find scalable technology that reliably detects pasted signatures, stamped signatures, or signatures generated by signature software.

So the agency is doing what enforcement agencies do when they cannot detect every violation: it is raising the price of getting caught.

What Actually Counts as an Invalid Signature

USCIS policy on what constitutes a valid signature has not changed. The interim final rule simply adds teeth to enforcement.

A valid signature is one of two things. It can be a handwritten mark on the signature line of the form, made by the requestor in wet ink. A thumbprint or an “X” counts. Photocopies, scans, and faxes of a wet-ink original are also acceptable, as long as the underlying document actually contained an original handwritten signature. The other option is a secure electronic signature generated through myUSCIS guided e-filing, where the system itself prompts and captures the signature.

Anything else is invalid. The Federal Register notice spells out the categories USCIS is targeting most aggressively.

An image of a signature pasted from one document onto another unsigned document. A stamped signature, with narrow exceptions. A signature applied by anyone other than the requestor, including attorneys and preparers. A signature generated by signature software like DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or Acrobat’s fill-and-sign function, when applied to a paper or PDFi filing rather than through myUSCIS guided e-filing.

The pattern USCIS has documented over five years tells the story. Signature-related denials grew from 300 in FY 2021 to 2,953 in FY 2025. Nearly a tenfold increase in five years. The agency expects to settle into roughly 1,200 denials per year going forward.

Where Self-Petitioners Are Most Exposed

For EB-2 NIW and EB-1A applicants, three forms carry the most risk under the new rule.

Form I-140. Filing fee currently $715. Losing this is a real cost, but the larger risk is timing. If the category retrogresses or the priority date matters for filing the I-485, the lost months of delay are worse than the lost fee.

Form I-907 (Premium Processing). Filing fee currently $2,965. A signature defect on the I-907 alone can cost the premium fee even if the underlying I-140 is otherwise sound. The combined cost of a premium I-140 filing is now $3,680. That is the size of the loss if both forms are denied for the same signature defect.

Form I-485. Filing fee $1,440 plus biometrics. A denial here triggers not just the fee loss but the broader discretionary consequences flagged in USCIS Policy Memorandum PM-602-0199, which redefined adjustment of status as an extraordinary act of administrative grace.

Petitioners filing through attorneys or preparers should pay particular attention to one specific risk. The interim final rule explicitly names signatures applied by an attorney or preparer in place of the requestor as invalid. The Form G-28 attorney appearance does not authorize the attorney to sign the underlying petition. Your signature must be your own.

A Pre-Filing Signature Checklist

Six steps that matter more after July 10, 2026 than they did before.

Sign in wet ink on the original form. If you plan to scan, fax, or photocopy the form for filing, the underlying document must carry your actual handwritten signature. Not a pasted image of one.

Sign on the signature line. Stray marks or signatures placed elsewhere on the form may not register at intake or in adjudication.

Do not let your attorney or preparer sign for you. The Form G-28 attorney appearance is for representation, not signature. Your signature must be yours, in your own hand.

Avoid signature software like DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or Acrobat’s fill-and-sign, unless you are filing through myUSCIS guided e-filing, where the system itself captures the signature. The interim final rule is explicit that software-generated signatures on paper or PDFi filings are invalid.

Inspect every signature before submission. Look at the scanned copy you are about to upload. If the signature looks like a pasted image rather than ink on paper, redo it.

Keep the wet-ink original. USCIS may request it later. Without an original to produce, an apparent copy-paste will be hard to defend.

If You Get Denied

You have two paths.

File Form I-290B within 30 days of the denial notice. The filing fee is $800. An appeal preserves any priority date and can succeed if USCIS misidentified the signature as invalid.

Or file a new petition with a new fee. This is faster than an appeal in most cases but starts the priority date over. That may be acceptable for some categories and devastating for others.

What is not allowed: curing the signature defect on the existing petition. The interim final rule explicitly rejects that option. There is no opportunity to send in a corrected signature page on an existing file.

Bottom Line

The interim final rule does not change what counts as a valid signature. It changes the consequence of submitting an invalid one.

Beginning July 10, 2026, a defective signature that slips past intake can cost the entire filing fee, on a single form or across the whole package if the defect appears on the controlling document. For petitioners building cases over months of preparation and thousands of dollars in fees, this is a procedural risk worth taking seriously.

Review every signature before you submit. Treat the signature page with the same care you give the personal statement and the recommendation letters.

The work is too important to lose to a copy-paste error.

See how others have done it. Our Successful Applications page profiles real STEM professionals who have secured approvals across science, technology, and business fields.

Ready to talk strategy? Book a consultation and we will walk through your specific case.

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