USCIS has modernized some of their forms, but many of their forms still are paper-based, and you will need to fill those out using a pen. It may occur to you what color pen you should use when you fill those forms and also, if you type them digitally, what color pen you should use to sign the USCIS forms.
In this article, we will review the official guidance given by USCIS on what color pen to use to complete the paper-based forms and what they prefer.
What Color Ink Pen should be used for USCIS Forms?
USCIS has given guidance on what color ink pen to use when you fill out the forms in multiple places. Let’s look at each of them:
USCIS forms filing tips: As per USCIS forms filing tips, you should use a Black Ink Pen. Below is the screenshot of the actual guidance given by them. You can check the Tips for Filing Forms by Mail
USCIS Filings Tips on Twitter: USCIS updated on Twitter on what color pen one should use when filling out the USCIS forms or using them to sign.
As per the filing tips given by the USCIS Twitter account, you should use a Black Ink Pen when filling out a form by hand or use it for signing the USCIS form. Below is the screenshot of the guidance given by them and you can check the USCIS official Twitter tweet.
Why should you use Black Ink Pen? Rationale?
The reason USCIS is asking applicants to use Black ink pen is to ensure that their digitization efforts and OCR (Optical Character Recognition) works well. Blank ink is best suited for OCR as it can help extract information clearly from a form.
If you use any other colors like red, blue , it can get tricky for the OCR. Hence, USCIS suggests that applicants use black ink pen.
What color ink pen should you use to Sign as per USCIS?
As per USCIS, you can use either dark blue or black ink pen to sign the USCIS forms. Based on guidance to fill out the form, Black ink is preferred and it is ideal to stick with Black ink, if you can.
Below is the screenshot of the information from the official guidance as per their 5 tips to file webpage.
What has been your experience filling out USCIS forms with pen? What color pen did you use?