Hi ya'll. March VSC filer here.

Just popping in to see what's new with you. Noticed the talk about touches. I was a faithful touch recorder. I took mine out of my signature because there were so many, but they are in the comments of my timeline. I had several touches about 2 weeks after the NOA1 time...three actually. Then it was a month later that the NOA2 touch came. So your recent touches could be like mine. Who knows what kind of shifting and sorting goes on. Maybe it's some kind of intermediate step they go through. Just speculating like we all do. My touch for NOA2 was on a Friday, but there was no update. It wasn't until Sunday that they sent me the email and updated the status. Got another touch when they sent it out to NVC. So that's a hint to know if it gets sent out by USCIS. Keep checking for touches after the NOA2. Probably doesn't happen like that for everybody, but it did for me.

This 'touch' thing seems to be more recent... Even though they supposedly process based on date received, it seems we are all getting touched close to a month after our NOA1 dates...and two days in succession. It kind of throws a wrench in the idea that the petitions sit in a box until the adjuticator is ready to work it. Perhaps there is a new procedure that runs you through database checks along the way. Either way, the touches make me happy!

My theory on touches is that the first few are to do with the payment and sending out name checks. Then a month or so later people tend to get a few touches again - possibly the name checks coming back and being checked? Once all this has happened your application goes in a box and waits to be moved onto someones desk for adjudication. Here is when the blindfolds come out and the adjudicators grab files at random I don't think there is any rule to these touches. I didn't even got a tickle at this stage I got my second set of touches and then was approved a month or so later. We were touched a grand total of 2 times whilst Nich was fondled ALOT. Touches aren't a firm indication of progress, its just nice to know that your file is being moved and not propping up the short leg of someones desk.

I hope everyone is well and approvals start coming through soon

Sterling Girl ~ If your fiance flies into JFK then maybe he'll bump into my Luis and me. I'm going to get him. He's a scaredy cat and has never been on a plane. Plus that gives me an excuse to go to Peru, and I love it there.

Kim ~ I'm sure if anyone gives you any new info on the touch thing you'll let us all know ASAP, right? lol



I'm not my happy self today, summer classes just started and I'm taking my "science" requirement, astronomy 105. Uhmmm, it's 3 1/2 hours long 2x a week and we have a test already on Thurs. This means that I will be studying for the next two days and pulling my hair out because "sciences" are not my best subject, if you know what I mean. I mean, c'mon I'm gonna be a Spanish teacher. I haven't used exponents in like 10 years, so I kinda gotta brush up on that, LOL

Sounds like a good explanation to me. Your touches after a month are probably equal my touches after two weeks because the average time has strung out longer lately. So with that concluded, you must be one month away from NOA2 after your cluster of touches....hahahaha...we are trying to be Sherlock Holmes. Good luck guys. It's coming and feels much better on the other side of NOA2 since you're not in that black hole of USCIS.

Girl, good luck on that exam . Hated science myself . Hope you'll remember all those crazy formulas.

, You know what I meant!

*Big question!*

Sound very promising This is the same type of thing that happened in 2005 when my first K1 was approved.

There may be a more practical reason for touches, but my thought is that the RECORDING of touches is a bone they throw us. Could you imagine waiting, blindly, for two or three or four (or more) months hearing NOTHING after your NOA1? Plus, I'm sure back in the day before they had the online case status service, people would get worried after hearing nothing for months and call them incessantly. I think the 'touch' is just a way to soothe the impatient AND for them not to get quite so many phone calls.

Noticed we'd slipped down Igor's list so an update list. Only March, April and May have changed since the last update. 2 added in March and 12 for April!!!

November = 26 Filers; 24 with NOA2 (92%), 1 with no accessible profile and 1 who hasn't been online since 7th November.

December = 62 Filers; 59 with NOA2 (95%), 1 with RFE pending, 1 waiting on NOA2 and 1 who hasn't been online since 3rd February.

January = 81 filers; 80 with NOA2 (99%) and 1 who hasn't been online since 23rd January.

February = 99 filers; 87 with NOA2 (88%), 5 with RFE pending, 2 waiting on NOA2 and 5 who haven't been online since May.

March = 81 filers; 46 with NOA2 (57%), 1 RFE pending and 34 waiting on NOA2.

April = 67 filers; 1 with NOA2 (2%) and 54 waiting. The 1 approval was an expedite though.

May = 34 filers; everyone still waiting at the moment.

Hopefully this will keep everyone's spirits up, although there hasn't been any change on Igor's list this week.......YET!!!

Going to PM the filers from right back to November who haven't been online for a while in the hope it generates and email to them telling them they have a PM so they can come along and update their timelines and move us down the list!!!!!

Thanks Graham!!

Thanks for the good luck wish Ana. Those formulas are killer. I hope I make it through the next 6 weeks LOL. After that I get to take a Latin American & Caribbean studies course for my minor, and I LOVE those. So that'll be good. Anything to take my mind of missing my hunny will work.

I'm excited about these touches. I think it's cool. I like thinking I haven't been thrown in a black hole (well not ME, but you know what I mean).

wow, Luis has never been to the US?! It´d be quite a change for him to just move there, right!!
So you teach spanish, I´m studying spanish and trying to teach my fiance how to speak portuguese! Portuguese and spanish are kind of alike and I think they´re difficult to learn. I´m having trouble trying to teach him how to conjugate verbs and everything... Any tips?

Everyone back to the USCIS date of November 17th has been PMd to ask the status of their case in the hope either they update their timelines on here or I will update them on our list.

Heard back from one so far, a March filer and they are still waiting on NOA2.

Good luck guys.

The way the process is explained by a former adjuticator our files (the hunny-bunnies ) are received, a bar code is affixed, they are processed for payment and stored in a box with others received around the same time until an adjuticator empties their previous box and goes into the 'holding' area to get the next. He/She then brings it to their desk and starts to adjuticate the files one by one. This includes running checks and database searches.

A touch is explained as that bar code being scanned into the system. An adjuticator is supposed to scan the petition each time it is moved so that the uscis always knows exatcly where that petition is at any given time. Some adjuticator's take files home which would explain Friday/Monday touches.

My assumption is that, of course, there are some adjuticators who 'touch' more than others and that if your name(s) gets a 'hit' or if you get an RFE, then you will perceivably get more touches. I also think that many people do not understand or even realize all the times they are 'touched' and/or don't track them....BUT judging by recent months, and by those who I know understand what 'touched' is ), this seems to be a new little pattern which started to devlop not too long ago. Everything is just speculation but it's something new...and it's something to pass the time. Oui! I've been here way too long!



Many people do actually go months without being touched and many even find they get their approval without a single scan (touch). I doubt very highly the uscis cares much about appeasing those they serve. It is, afterall, a government agency. The people they hire to answer the phones are not brain surgeons and often dispense inaccurate information anyway. It would probably cost them more to have an adjuticator scanning files so the public 'stays happy'.

Whatever the case. We're in the home stretch and that feels good.

Fernanda ~

No, he's NEVER been here. They won't give him a tourist visa for the obvious reasons: single guy, doesn't own a home, etc. He's a flight risk. I wish he could come and visit here though, I've been to Perú twice and absolutely loved it there.

As far as teaching, I'm studying to be a teacher but I used to be a TA and tutor in the Hispanic Languages department of my university. I can tell you that the structure of both Spanish and Portuguese are very similar in that they are Romance languages. However, there are a lot of differences, and to be honest, I can not understand spoken Portuguese, however I can read it.

If you want to teach your hubby Portuguese, I would recommend getting him some kind of a textbook to work with for the basic stuff (i.e. verb conjugations, basic vocab, etc). Having a point of reference is a great start. When you're with him, you will be able to teach him communicatively, I talk to Luis a lot in English on purpose so he can start getting used to the language and he is actually understanding a lot of it.

By the way, I don't know if your fiance knows, but Vonage has a Latin America plan I just got and I can call Luis unlimited! I love it. That would be a good start for teaching him Portuguese, lol.

“You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.” ;Paulo Coelho

Good luck my friends!
//Alex

It might not be too practical of a solution for you, but taking two years of Latin really helped me in that I can read just about any Romance language and understand most of it. I may not be able to fluently speak any of them, but were I lost in a Latin American country, I'm sure I could probably figure out where I was going. A foundation in Latin helps an unbelievable amount.

Now, grammar and conjugation? That's another story, but I've heard almost unanimously that eventually hearing it a lot (by tapes, or actually listening to/conversing with people who speak the language) helps, as well.

Good morning April filers.

No approvals yet this week... I think someone needs to take the 'paddles' to the VSC!

Kim, you are turning out to be quite the vixen. I am too lazy to look through the old posts, but there was something about you commenting on Bex going commando, then the bi question, and now paddling.

No wonder this thread is one of the more active ones.

In all seriousness, I would like to see some approvals by the end of next week. As I have previously stated, anything before July really does not speed up my timetable. But, I would like to see some approvals for April filers. Especially for those of you where time is an issue.

Stay positive April,

Brian

Brian, perhaps it's just YOUR perception of my words?

Naaaaaaaaaa... it's probably me!

I was touched today!! YAY!!!


Also I have a question for you all. More like what is your opinion? If all goes well and things go at the pace they seem to be going I'm hopeing Gareth will be here for good in late Oct. early Nov. *fingers crossed* That will put us getting married at the latest possible date (which isn't a good idea to wiat till the last minute.) in Jan or Feb. I'm still in college and I graduate in May. I want a pretty nice wedding and to be able to plan it I need to have more than three months, especially being in school. So has anyone else done this...go ahead and go to the judge and get legally married which will mean we can start the AOS and go ahead and send in the "able to work" forms (forgot the name lol) and have time to plan a semi-stress free wedding for May 23rd for all the family to come and celebrate with us, we can exchange vows and stuff. What do ya think?

Stephanie

Stephanie, hi

This is exactly what we plan on doing. Dave thinks that to have a proper wedding my family must be present, and bringing them in before I am legally married can be problematic, plus the stupid time constraint. How can one plan a wedding in three months? I mean usually people do it for at least a year! See, USCIS is ripping us off of yet another joy .

So, we are thinking about having a small legal ceremony and than start planning a bigger wedding for after I get settled in and my family can make it to the States. Dave is toying with an idea of eloping for our lil' legal wedding. I actually kind of like it .

And think about it, you'll be able to share your vows twice! I mean, the first ceremony doesn't have to be an informal courthouse signing of paperwork, you two can make it really special and meaningful and share that moment with each other, or a small group of friends/relatives, and than have a grand wedding with cake, and flowers, and that big puffy dress (or whatever is your fantasy ).

Ana

We're going to be doing the same thing...
Wedding here first (in the town hall)
then planning 2 weddings, one in Peru and one here
I'm pretty psyched, it's gonna be awesome

So, you gonna end up with 3 weddings? How cool . And what, three dresses? . Now, Peru sounds awsome, do they have any neat traditions there?

February = 99 filers; 87 with NOA2 (88%), 5 with RFE pending, 2 waiting on NOA2 and 5 who haven't been online since May.

March = 81 filers; 48 with NOA2 (59%), 1 RFE pending and 34 waiting on NOA2.

April = 58 filers; 1 with NOA2 (2%) and 57 waiting. The 1 approval was an expedite though.

May = 35 filers; everyone still waiting at the moment.

Slight miscalculation on the amount of April filers last night everyone, sorry about that!!!!

I got a PM back from a few of the outstanding members but unfortunately only one of them had had NOA2 and has since updated their profile. Thank you very much for doing so!!!!!!!

Start working in the bar on Saturday, pay is pretty poor but hey it's money and it's all going straight to savings for the bump!!!!

Keep the positive thoughts coming guys, we had another March filer approved today so I can smell an approval coming our way

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum and have a quick question. My NOA1 notice was on 4/1/08 in Vermont. I hear people say their file got "touched". What does this mean and where did you get that informtion from?

Thanks all and good luck!

Tom

This will answer your questions Tom

http://www.visajourney.com/wiki/index.php/Touch

Yep 3 weddings... one dress. I'm kind of broke... lol.

Peru is great, I love it there. There's a lot of great traditions, one of those traditions is to have a GINORMOUS wedding. So, uhmm, we're doing that. He may have to sedate me, but we're doing it, lol. I love family but I mean Luis has enough family to fill an entire town, haha.

The wedding up here will be like 100 or less people. That will be cool.

Graham.. so sorry about your penguins.

At least Detroits not celebrating in the basketball world!

L.A.'s going down too!

March has another 2 approvals today, towards the end of the month too

82 filers, 50 with NOA2 (61%), 1 RFE pending and 31 waiting.

Febraury 98 filers, 87 with NOA2 (89%), 5 RFEs pending and 6 waiting.

January 83 filers, 83 with NOA2 (100%).

December 62 Filers, 59 with NOA2 (95%), 2 with RFE pending and 1 who hasn't been online since 3rd February.

November 26 Filers, 24 with NOA2 (92%), 1 with no accessible profile and 1 who hasn't been online since 7th November.

Oi Fernanda,

I'm American, first picked up a few Portuguese words here and there starting November '04, and started seriously learning in July 2006. I'm not fluent yet, but I can already have a conversation about almost anything, and I did pretty well in Brazil all by myself last October!

I have half a shelf worth of books, but there are a few I especially recommend:

--Portuguese in 10 minutes a day. It looks like a children's book, but it's excellent. For example, it'll have a drawing of a dinner table, with all the words (plate, napkin, and so on), and they also write how to pronounce the words.

--Portuguese for Dummies. It does have a pretty good explanation about conjugating verbs. And it's written in a way that even someone who didn't pay much attention in high school (like me) can understand.

--Audio CDs from Pimsleur. Pimsleur is the only one around that doesn't come with any books. That's right, just play the CDs in the car as you drive. I found them very helpful, for not much money, and I didn't have to invest much time, since I'm on the road a lot anyway.

--Larousse concise dictionary. There are two versions, one with 80,000 translations, and one with 120,000. Spend the extra $5 on the bigger one. Ideally, if he has one in Orlando, and you have another copy there in Brazil, it'll make it much easier to explain things over the phone.

--Does Orlando have much of a Brazilian community? If so, he should start spending time with Brazilians. Ideally, he should have some Brazilian friends who speak a lot of English, who can explain things to him.........and some other friends who speak ZERO English, who will force him to learn faster because he'll be forced to converse with them in Portuguese.

--I can't remember the other person's name now, but the person who said that if he knows any Latin, that would surely help a lot. The Romance languages all have a lot of similarity.........I find that even with my very basic Portuguese, I can already understand a lot of Italian, Spanish, and even French.

The numbers keep looking better as Graham noted. Our total pool of numbers is a little different, but the trend is noticeable.

I have 70 March petitions with NOA1 dated between 03/01 and 03/31, with 48 already being approved. Which correlates to a 69% approval rate. But the most exciting item to me, is the fact that apps from 3/24 and 3/27 were approved.

As Kim mentioned, I too subscribe to the box theory as put forth by the former USCIS adjudicator.
So, I cannot help but believe that some of the early April's have to be co-mingled with the March's.

And of course, at some point, a box of mid/late April's will get done at a surprising pace to the dismay of earlier filers. Sometimes, it is easy to predict the unpredictable.

Stay positive April,

Brian

Good luck Brian, I hope you get approved first being the opening poster of this topic and being that your NOA1 date is April 1st!!!!

An update on March filers guys - 82 filers, 51 with NOA2 (62%) and 31 waiting.

Have a nice Thursday night everyone

Guys, I was touched again today... is this normal? It's like 3 times in the past week.

I hope this is a good sign.

I know most of us were getting touched one day and then the following day but I think you are the first one to get touched 3 days in a row. Let's hope it is something positive for you, but a touch is a touch. Yay!!!!

Another touch for me as well. That's just eerie, Susita. I swear Jim's going to end up in the waiting area right alongside Luis. I'll tell him to say hi.

Really hope that those touches mean that finally they got around to your boxes, guys! Keeping my fingers crossed for all April filers!

BTW, Dave finally got our NOA1 yesterday! We were so estatic to be in the system!

Sterling Girl ~ Hahaha... that would be so funny. I hope this means good things for us!


Ana ~ Congrats on your NOA1

Well it seems you folks are in the same box!

No new touches for us. An approval would be super though!

Ana&D... congratulations on your NOA1! I'm glad it finally got there and is in the works!

I will go out on the limb and boldly predict that two April filers will be approved by next Friday.

Call it crazy, but I just have this feeling that were going to start getting one or two approvals every week over the next couple of weeks.

I am outta here, so everybody have a great weekend.

Brian

I hope so Brian, I've got my fingers crossed for everyone.

I really wish everyone would update their timeline properly as going through all the profiles is getting to be a pain in the arse!!!!

An update on March filers guys - 83 filers, 55 with NOA2 (67%) and 28 waiting. Yep yep yep, two thirds of filers have been approved

February has 98 filers, 88 with NOA2 (%), 5 with RFE pending and 5 waiting.

And lastly for us April guys the numbers are 59 filers, 1 with NOA2 although that was an expedite.

Another February approval on Igor's list today guys.

So February has 98 filers, 89 with NOA2 (91%), 4 with RFE pending and 5 waiting.

Take care everyone!!!!!!

OK OK I'm being really anal about searching these timelines now and looking back over February someone has put their profile down as K3 but it is in the K1 visa section. You'll all be happy to know that I go back to work tomorrow so the updates won't be pretty much hourly like they are just now!!!!!!

So this is the definitive February and March list as the rest of the month's are pretty much done.

So February has 97 filers, 89 with NOA2 (92%), 4 with RFE pending and 5 waiting.

And March is 83 filers, 55 with NOA2 (67%) and 28 waiting. Yep yep yep, two thirds of filers have been approved

Take care everyone!!!!!!

Graham ~ thanks for the updates you always keep us very posted hehe

Brian ~ I'm hoping your prediction is correct, that would be SUPER

I keep checking USCIS's website now because I'm so on edge and think an approval could happen at any minute b/c of my weird touch pattern... lol

Girl, they really like touching you, don't they

Count me in as an April filer. I truly believe I'll be a statistical outlyer. Given the specifics of our case and security clearances I'm estimating a very very very long wait. Oh well . I love reading the updates though. It's really informative. We had one touch so far on 5-22.

Good luck to all!

A March approval added to Igor's list today guys, but they are a new user so the percentage pretty much stays the same. But an approval is an approval and is always great to see on his list!!!!

84 filers, 56 (67%) with NOA2 and 28 waiting. Off to work now guys so I'll check later when I get back. Work, argh!!!!!!!!!!

I wish I knew where our numbers were off. I have 83 filers, 52 approved, 31 waiting. Can't figure out the 4 extra approved. Oh well, we're still getting through March which is good news for April.

Happy weekend April filers!

hot..hot..hot here in New England the next few days! I'm not going to complain, though. When we were parted last fall, winter was just beginning and I remember saying that we just needed to get through the cold weather and when it's warm again he'll be close to coming home... well it's HOT... let's get a move on uscis!

Brian, do letu s know what your crystal ball is telling you next time you stop in.

Graham, hope you're enjoying this new job a little more than the last.

Milo, sorry you think your case will have some stumbling blocks to get over. We sent our package the same day, have our noa1 dated the same day as well. We were also touched on 5/22 but also on 5/23. I do hope you're wrong about your wait and that you see your approval... well, the same day as we do!

Nice to see you Nic. As long as they keep approving you folks and move on to us i'm all good!

Well i've got lots of work to do here at the computer today but it's just so gorgeous out I can already hear the devil/angel on my shoulders arguing about what i'll do! The one downfall about working for yourself!

have a great day folks.