considering my wife is in Canada...

Congratulations! I keep track of your timeline and felt happy that you were approved. My lawyer filed my petition close to your date. I hope I could get my approval soon.

Way over my head!
To sleepy to even think about it!
I'll give it another thought when coffee gets in in the morning!

This is the standard wording for when both the I130 and I129F are approved. It means they are keeping your I130 at the service centre until your wife is ready to adjust status from within the US.

Only your I129F will continue it's journey to the NVC.

Hope this helps

Right on Cheryl.
G, this is what it says now when they are paired together (this has been widely discussed in other VJ threads). Only, the service center won't keep it, they will forward it to NRC (National Records Center) for safe keeping until AOS.

Thank you. Hope you get yours very soon!

Thank C&J. This is what i thought but i have been exchnaging messages with Almoto who is stuck in a situation where the I-130 was sent to the NVS along with the I-129F. Not sure what is going on...

Hello,

My I-130 was not sent to the NVC, I got the same wording as you did. However, my concern is we were not going to have my husband come back and adjust. My attorney believes with the difficulties in his case (15 year overstay in the US & an old criminal record in England) it would be better for us to do everything while he is in England. So, we wanted to go ahead with the immigrant visa and have him come here when they approve our I-601.

How am I to know if they've sent a package to London? I'm so confused even though I'm using an attorney.

Sorry for the confusion.

If the I-130 was not sent on to the NVC then you are not following the immigrant visa route , you are only following the K3 To get the ball rolling on the I-130 again, you or your lawyer would have to submit an I-824. it does take many months for USCIS to action one of these forms though

I don't understand how this happened, I filed the I-130 in March and then followed it with the I129F a couple months later. Any ideas why this happened?

They pair the petitions together and, because you filed the I129F, USCIS assumes that it's the I129F you wish to persue (someone who wanted an immigrant visa straight away would never file an I129F)... Therefore they hold the I130 for adjustment of status in the US. Getting an I130 sent on to the NVC when there is a valid I129F is a very rare thing these days. There have been people who have clearly written on their I130 that they wanted consular processing and have still been ignored and kept for adjustment of status

I am really confused why your lawyer (who knew you wanted everything to be handled in the UK) would even suggest, let alone implement, an I129F petition for your husband

As I mentioned in an earlier post, to get the ball rolling again submit the form they mention on the NOA2 (I-824). It will probably take about 6 months for USCIS to action it (as always) but it will result in your I130 being sent to NVC.

Almoto,
Yes, this policy was announced in November of 2006, you can see the notice here.

Your lawyer should have known about this, and knowing that you wanted everything done in the UK, I, like Cheryl, have to wonder why he would have gone the K3 path with you guys. This is a royal screw up. Now, you have to file the I-824 and pay the $340 fee that goes with it. This form will take USCIS some time to process (we have had reports that it takes about 6 months), but be mindful of the advisory from USCIS that due to the fee beaters they are taking even longer for some petitions filed after June 1, 2007. Once that is processed and your I130 moves to NVC, you will have to wait 3-6 months to get through NVC processing, then on to England to await the interview.

USCIS had trouble linking the petitions early on and both were still getting through to NVC at first, but since the February filers, they have gotten pretty good with it and it is rare that they don't link the petitions and thus hold the I130. There have even been recent reports where they approved the I130 first, but having found and linked it to a corresponding I129F, decided to hold the I130 anyways. As long as the 2 petitions are approved within 3 months of each other, for most people, the K3 still will go faster due to the shorter NVC processing and lead to reunification quicker, so that is why they implemented the policy.

I just got off the phone with USCIS and after explaining the situtation to two customer service reps. the 2nd one told me that if my I-130 clearly stated that my husband is not living in the US then they would forward it to NVC and I wouldn't have to file the I-824 and pay. But it would take several more weeks for them to process it because it's a "very busy time with the holiday's". I sure hope he knew what he was talking about.

Oh, by the way...my attorney originally told me, if we file both I-130 & I-129F we'll decide on which visa to proceed with after we see which one gets approved first. They said I'd have a choice.

I wish you the best of luck, and I really do hope this works out for you. But, what the CSR said does not fit with their stated policy. The stated policy says that you can still get consular processing of an I130 with a K3 if you clearly indicate you want consular processing on the petition. Unfortunately, nobody on VJ has reported successfully doing this. As Cheryl noted, LvivLovers tried to clearly request it, but the I130 got sent to NRC anyway, and only the I!29F went to NVC.


Yes, that was the old way. That was what I had hoped for too, a good race for two petitions, but USCIS killed that before it started. The new way is filing the I129F locks you into K3.


Again, the stated policy can be found here.

Thank you for that information, I'll be sure to send it to my attorney....maybe he'll give me a credit on his next bill for his mess up, ya sure like that would ever happen.

Looks like our timelines are about the same, hope all goes well with yours.