The difficulties of filing from abroad

[Thesmiths2016 117]

For those of you filing from abroad, you'll probably understand the frustrations of trying to contact USCIS. Yes I've managed to get through to them by phone. 12 times. And I've been transferred to a 2nd tier customer service officer 8 times. The only issue is unless you get in at the very start of their day and they're available, you get the callback option. Catch 22 as they won't call back an international number.

I needed to get in touch for two reasons:

1) our case wasn't showing online, although we did get our i-797and the email notifying us of our NOA1 date

2) we moved countries and needed to do an address change. International address changes can only be made by a tier 2 officer

Well I have good news, I finally got some action. Although surprisingly not through the USCIS office. I got referred to my local US consulate who couldn't help me, put me back through to USCIS, and got me incredibly frustrated. From there I did manage to get an email address, which got me a reply saying they also have no access to my file. BUT they referred me to an email address for bangkok USCIS field office. (I'm in NZ but filed in Australia so this surprised me).

I can't say enough good things about the Bangkok office. Not only did they refer me to change of address forms, but they asked me to scan a copy back to them as well as posting it to USCIS so they could as a "goodwill" gesture send it as a seperate followup. They also followed up my case not being online, and had it escalated. They emailed me to keep me in the loop with what they were doing and why ... I would seriously send a followup thank you card if I knew the persons full name and office address.

Today at 105 days since my NOA1, my case is online! I checked other numbers around mine and of the 90 around mine that didn't get added online before, mine is the only one showing apart from a couple of RFEs and returns.

Now I wait, still no NOA2, but I'm telling you it's such a relief just knowing I have a way to check online without trusting postal mail :-) Being 38.5 weeks pregnant this is one big relief to me!

[NikLR 13,220]

The online case tracker is fickle. I didnt see my case for 2+ months either. Some people never see any changes. I remember a couple who the wife had citizenship and their petition still showed the first stage.

~~moved to progress reports from process and procedures ~~

[Brazilian1901 12]

The only issue is unless you get in at the very start of their day and they're available, you get the callback option. Catch 22 as they won't call back an international number.

Lots of ways to get a US number these days, try an app like Talkatone that lets you receive calls/texts with a US # from your cell phone. It has saved me many times, I have a work number that I can access with a soft phone, but use Talkatone to receive texts if for some reason I need to confirm something through text.