Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) is a program managed by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a branch of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS). SAVE was created in 1986 and facilitates lookups on the immigration and nationality status of individuals in the United States. It is an intergovernmental initiative designed to help federal, state, tribal, and local government agencies, or by a contractor acting on the agency's behalf, to determine eligibility for benefits, licenses or grants, government credentials, or to conduct background investigations.
SAVE is one of two programs that uses the Verification Information System (VIS). The other program is the Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification Program, also known as E-Verify, and is used by employers to verify the immigration status of employees. For additional verification (in cases where VIS proves inadequate), SAVE relies on the Person Centric Query System (PCQS). Over time, the use of SAVE has been increasingly mandated for various federal and state programs.
In March 2025, Trump's on "Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections" laid the base for DOGE to integrate SAVE with data from the Social Security Administration to enable cross checking voter registration and citizenship status via social security numbers.
History
Creation and implementation, 1986–1996 The original impetus to create the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) was in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), Public Law 99-603, which was passed by the 99th United States Congress and signed into law by then United States President Ronald Reagan.
The IRCA restricted access to six federal benefit programs to United States citizens, lawful permanent residents, and permanent residents under color of law (note that the jargon "federal public benefit" would be established much later, with the PRWORA). The Act required the Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) to establish a system for verifying the immigration status of non-citizen applicants applying for these programs. The programs were:
Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Medicaid (US Department of Health and Human Services). AFDC would later be replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Temporary Unemployment Compensation Program (US Department of Labor) Title IV Educational Assistance Programs (US Department of Education) Some housing assistance programs (US Department of Housing and Urban Development)
The INS began to implement SAVE, with a two-stage verification process: Primary Verification and Secondary Verification. The electronic database, known as the Alien Status Verification Index, was initially maintained by Martin Marietta on contract with the INS, which in 1995 became Lockheed Martin.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) also commonly described as the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, Public Law 104-193, was passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. The law was the cornerstone of the Republican Party's Contract with America and fulfilled Clinton's promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it." While its most famous component was the replacement of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) by the more temporary and less generous Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the law had lesser known provisions surrounding non-citizen eligibility for welfare benefits.
The law defined "federal public benefits" and "state and local public benefits." PRWORA required the Attorney General to establish regulations and interim guidance for the verification of immigration status of persons applying for federal public benefits, including benefits whose existing statutes did not specifically state that verification of immigration status was required. The guidance is for any entity administering a non-exempt federal public benefit, other than non-profit charitable organizations, and is not limited to the agencies and programs specified in IRCA or those using SAVE. However, SAVE helps with compliance with this guidance.
PRWORA made a distinction between two kinds of non-citizens, broadly defined:
Qualified aliens are aliens who could in principle qualify for federal benefits (or state benefits with partial federal funding) that are accessible to citizens. However, even qualified aliens may have to meet conditions (such as work history, or presence in the United States for some amount of time) that citizens did not need to demonstrate. Qualified aliens include lawful permanent residents as well as those on asylum and humanitarian statuses. Non-qualified aliens are aliens who are ineligible for all federal benefits as well as state benefits with federal funding, with a few exceptions such as emergency health care or relief. Non-qualified aliens include all people in temporary nonimmigrant statuses (such as students and temporary workers) regardless of the duration of their stay. The other main category of non-qualified aliens is people who are not currently in authorized status, either due to unauthorized entry or because they fell out of status in the United States.
Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA ) under Bill Clinton required the Immigration and Naturalization Services that would later be restructured as the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agency, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to cooperate with federal, state, and local agencies to determine the citizenship or immigration status of any individual within the jurisdiction of the agency for any purposes authorized by law. The SAVE program has been the way that DHS and USCIS meet the obligation. IIRIRA also contained provisions that led to the creation of the "Basic Pilot Program", that would eventually morph into E-Verify, the analog of SAVE used by employers.
Expansion, 2005–2014 The REAL ID Act of 2005 mandated that state-issued IDs such as driver's license or state ID cards could be used as proof of identity by the federal level only if they complied with specific compliance measures. Of the various federal identification purposes to which these compliance measures were relevant, the one with the largest affected population was commercial air travel in the United States. However, since most US states have not fully implemented the standards, the date from which only compliant IDs were accepted was pushed back to 2018.
One of the compliance requirements for state driver's licenses and identification cards is that State Department of Motor Vehicles must verify the legal presence status of non-citizens seeking these documents using SAVE. They can either directly enroll in SAVE, or use AAMVANet, the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators Network.
One of the consequences created by the REAL ID Act was that people on temporary non-immigrant statuses could be in legal status despite having an expired visa, and state offices were not necessarily equipped to evaluate the legality of their current status. SAVE has been intended to help with making less error-prone determinations of legal status for these cases. SAVE has had other issues, including not having up-to-date information for extensions of stay, extensions of stay for dependents, and change of status from student to temporary worker. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement provides guidance to students who encounter problems getting a driver's license or state identification card due to these issues.
On December 11, 2008, a System of Records Notice by DHS expanded the use of SAVE to any purpose authorized by law.
2008 Mandate of E-Verify Around 2008, E verify became a fully fledged program mandated for some employers. Until 2008, DHS conducted Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) for the individual systems used in SAVE and E-Verify, specifically the VIS and PCQS. However, in 2010, DHS switched to conducting PIAs for the programs as seen by their end users, i.e., PIAs for SAVE. and E-Verify.
Over time, the use of SAVE has been increasingly mandated for various federal and state programs. For example, the use of SAVE was optional for agencies administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, but with the Agricultural Act of 2014 it became mandatory.
Integration of social security data, 2025
At the end of the Biden administration USCIS was planning SAVE upgrades to enable checking voters' citizenship status. In March 2025, Trump's laid the base for DOGE to integrate SAVE with data from the Social Security Administration. In April SAVE use became free of charge. In May it was reported that Palantir was contracted to employ its Gotham software for this purpose. As of June 2025, most states could not yet use SAVE to check eligibility for voter registration, because they did not collect Social Security numbers for voter registration. Furthermore, the DHS did not send a "system of records notice", as mandated by the Privacy Act of 1974, to give public notice, that there are new ways personal information is collected.
Permissible uses and users SAVE can be used by agencies of governments at any level in the United States, including:
The federal government State governments Local governments (such as city and county governments) Tribal governments
A given agency is eligible to use SAVE only if determining the immigration and nationality status of individual is necessary for its work of one of these types:
Determination of eligibility for a federal, state, or local public benefit Issuing a license or grant Issuing a government credential Conducting a background investigation Any other lawful purpose
In addition to these, any contractor of an agency of the above description is eligible to use SAVE if the task contracted out to them requires immigration and nationality lookups for one of the above reasons.
SAVE does not itself make determinations regarding the applicant's eligibility for a benefit or license. Rather, it simply provides an easy way to pull information about the benefit or license applicant from a variety of government databases. As discussed later, the absence of matching records in SAVE does not imply that the applicant's presence in the United States is unauthorized, or that the applicant is ineligible for the benefit. It simply means that the records accessible were not able to confirm the applicant's eligibility.
Use by customer agencies
General process The general way SAVE is used is as follows. The noncitizen first submits all the necessary documentation for the program he or she is applying to; eligibility criteria can vary based on the person's immigration status, the state, and the program being applied to. If the documentation in principle demonstrates eligibility, the caseworker at the agency can use SAVE to verify that the documentation is accurate. If Initial Verification fails, then the caseworker can and must, if the applicant wants, submit the case for Additional Verification and then, if necessary, submit Form G-845. If the verification fails to demonstrate the validity of the documentation, the applicant is not granted the benefit. As of 2016, the caseworker could not use this failure to conclude that the applicant is lying about his/her status, or to use it to report the applicant to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Modes and stages of verification SAVE has three modes of electronic access that offer all of its basic functionality.
Web-based access, through the USCIS website accessed through a secure web browser Web services, an interface that uses a direct machine-to-machine connection SAVE via AAMVAnet (VLS), available to Department of Motor Vehicles in US states