I hired a lawyer to do my K1 visa, she said she filed Jun 5. It has been over a month with no confirmation of receipt. Is this unusual, does it take that long. Can it take up to a month.

I wouldn't worry too much about not hearing back yet. When you call the USCIS, they do say that it can take around a month for the to receive and start processing your petition. I am also aware that, because of some of the service centers passing on the petitions to other centers now, some things have slowed up a little. We actually sent our I-129F into the Texas center back in late April and they didn't receive it until May 15th. We also didn't get the NOA1 sent to us and had to call to get the receipt number last night. If you are concerend, ask your lawyer to call the USCIS customer help line and ask if they have the receipt number for your case so you can keep track of the progress online. They are really nice and we spoke to a wonderful lady last night who helped us, and put our minds to rest.

Good luck with your petition and take care.

Did you pay the filing fee with a personal check? If so, has your check cleared. If it has, you can get the receipt number off of the back of the check. If you filed to Vermont, it will start with EAC, if you filed to any other service center it will start with WAC. If you have the receipt number, you can go to www.uscis.gov and check on your case status.

As for the NOA1 (receipt notice), there have been severe delays starting in April. The average time is usually a week to 10 days, but since April it has been 1 month+. The reason lies first in the deluge of H1B work visa petitions they got in the first few days of April, and there was also apparently a computer glitch at California Service center that led to a delay in printing some notices. As for redpixie's note, they have been shipping all I129Fs and I130s to CSC from all other service centers except Vermont for quite some time. This has not really contributed to the delays.

The delay is a more recent problem. Do a search on the forums for this you will see plenty of people went nuts over it. Especially K3 filers, as they can use their first NOA1 as evidence for their next filing.

Cheers

Hi...and welcome to the VJ's!!!
You will get a lot of opinions on this board...worth exactly what you are paying for them. BUT...there is a lot of GOOD ADVICE and help from everyone. (Read: Advice...not legal advice.) If you have a question, post it and you will get multiple responses. So...that said, here are my opinions/advice:

1) My opinion is that you do NOT need a lawyer to file these things for you. They are designed so an average person of average intelligence can fill them out and accomplish the task. An attorney is going to file these papers on THEIR time...and YOUR MONEY!

2) Our NOA1 came three weeks after my first mailing...went to Texas first...then to California. I thought 3 weeks was pretty good service!

3) Please fill out your timeline...it helps everyone see where you are in the process. You will be getting better advice if you do this.

Regards,
Craig

I agree... it took 2 days for me and my Fiance to collect everything... and it wasn't dificult at all... VJ members helped a lot in some issues as well We recieved NOA-1 after 1 week we send our petition

Good luck!

I hired an attorney for our petition. He has been very helpful and it's been nice that he takes care of things since I just moved. It was one less thing to worry about. I think once she is here we will do the AOS etc on our own though.

Quote Craig: "1) My opinion is that you do NOT need a lawyer to file these things for you. They are designed so an average person of average intelligence can fill them out and accomplish the task. An attorney is going to file these papers on THEIR time...and YOUR MONEY!"

(Yet to work out this damn board thing!)

I completely agree. Lawyers are pretty costly and, if you can avoid using them then avoid at all costs. I've seen quotes online for Lawyers offering to sort out petitions for upwards of $1500 (filing fees usually not inclusive). I know some people consider going through a lawyer as they might think that this might help their petition in some way, but it doesn't.