How to Submit a Comment on Federal Regulations

After a law is passed by Congress, federal agencies—such as the Department of Homeland Security—must publish regulations to explain how those laws will be enforced. Because the enforcement of the laws has an impact on the public, federal law requires agencies to publish proposed rules and allow the public to comment on them.

Commenting on regulations is one of the most direct and important ways that the public can influence federal policy. Agencies depend on comments to assess the real impact of policies and actions on the public and they are required by law to read and consider the comments they receive.

All current regulations are published on regulations.gov. You can also find them in the Federal Register (federalregister.gov), which is a daily publication of all regulation action on any given day. You can sign up for email alerts on the Federal Register web site to get notified when a regulation is scheduled to be published.

For example, you could sign up for alerts for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and be notified any time there is a change to USCIS regulations and forms.

On both sites, you can search by agency, docket number, or posting date to find the regulation you want to comment on.

The official site to submit electronic comments is regulations.gov. The Federal Register is like a daily newspaper that posts notices of regulatory action. For some rules, the agency will allow the public to submit comments through the Federal Register website which automatically sends the comment to regulations.gov. This option is not available for all rules, but where allowed, there’s no difference between submitting on the Federal Register web site or regulations.gov.

You can submit comments any time during the comment period, which is usually 30 or 60 days from the date that the regulation is published. The postings on regulations. gov and the Federal Register will show the deadline for submitting comments.

NOTE: COMMENTS MUST BE SUBMITTED BEFORE MIDNIGHT EASTERN TIME ON THE SPECIFIED DATE. THE SUBMISSION PORTALS WILL NOT ALLOW FOR COMMENTS TO BE SUBMITTED AFTER MIDNIGHT EASTERN TIME EVEN IF IT IS NOT MIDNIGHT YET WHERE YOU ARE.

Any member of the public is allowed to submit a comment during the open comment period. You do not need specialized training and you are able to submit your comment anonymously. You can submit your comment either as an individual or as an organization or a collaborative group.

Any relevant information that you think the agency should consider before the regulation takes effect. Information about how a proposed regulation might affect you, your family, your community or the people your organization serves may be especially helpful to the agency. If you have data or survey results that you want the agency to consider, you can share that. If you have personal stories from community members that you want to highlight, you can share that.

No, BUT the agency is only required to consider comments that are relevant to the regulation. Comments about different topics or that have nothing to do with the specific regulation will not be considered. Additionally, the agency does not have to consider comments that are submitted after the comment period ends or that were submitted via a method outside of the instructions. For example, if electronic submission through regulations.gov is required, the agency does not have to accept comments that are mailed or sent through email.

Instructions on how to submit comments will be listed on regulations.gov and on the Federal Register posting for the rule. Usually, the agency will accept electronic comments - which must be written in English - on both regulations.gov and the Federal Register web site, but there are times where comments must be mailed to the agency and both web sites will have instructions of how to do that. Sometimes the agency only allows electronic submission through regulations.gov. Where electronic submission is allowed, there is a button on both web sites that you can click which will take you to a submission screen. You can either type your comment into this screen or you can upload a file with your comment.