Immigration meetings online

Residents of Spokane and North Idaho can now use the Internet to schedule an appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency has announced.

A new service called InfoPass allows customers to avoid long lines at USCIS offices by scheduling a date and time to meet with an immigration information officer. InfoPass will be available at all 33 district offices nationally by early September.

The service is expected to be particularly helpful to people driving long distances for an appointment at the agency’s Spokane office, which covers much of Eastern Washington and the northernmost counties of Idaho.

The agency, previously called the Immigration and Naturalization Service, now also offers electronic filing for immigration benefits. Users also may go online to check the status of their immigration cases. The USCIS will e-mail updates when the status of a case changes.

InfoPass is available in 12 languages: Arabic, Chinese, Creole, English, French, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, Russian and Vietnamese. More languages will be added later.

To schedule an appointment online or to check the status of an immigration case, go to the agency’s Web site, www.uscis.gov.