Requesting expedited K-1

[aaron2020 11,651]

Ali, you are just being ridiculous. 

 

You are not required to travel to Barcelona for the K-1 immigration process.  You choose to buy yourself non-refundable plane tickets for a vacation in Spain, and with that you want an expedite.  

 

How about the rest of us who chose not to buy non-refundable tickets for vacations and used the money that would have gone to airfare to pay for shipping instead?  Are we just idiots?  We didn't get our vacations, had to pay for shipping, and didn't get our cases expedited for ignoring the US Government's advice.  Idiots.  

Edited January 8, 2017 by aaron2020

[Unidentified 2,930]

2 minutes ago, ali1632 said:

One would think, but the example of the girl who got expedited because she'd lose her vacation time was doing the exact same thing. She was not required to go to Jamaica to retrieve her fiancé, but they approved her request.

 

Some stupid requests does get expedited yes. Same with the travel permissions for people waiting on their green cards. They get expedited travel authorizations to have a second wedding when they shouldn't have gotten it approved in the first place. UCSIS does mistakes too. 

[Boiler 43,429]

If in doubt

 

EXPEDITE

[ali1632 10]

5 minutes ago, Unidentified said:

Because you do realize that if everyone sends in ridiculous requests like yours the whole system will get bogged down and then people with real emergencies like dying future spouses etc will not get a reply from USCIS before it is too late. 

I don't think that is true, it's mostly an automated process. A 5 minute phone call to customer service, and an automated email is triggered. Then your faxed response gets routed to a specialist who can probably review in 2 minutes. That's why it all comes down to documentation: they will decide whether proof is established or not very quickly. Someone who is actually experiencing a medical emergency will certainly get the same consideration. 

 

I would expect that people sending incomplete petitions and triggering RFEs later in the process take far more precious time away from the rest of applicants than a simple expedite request, which is not even handled by the same customer service team.

 

Maybe the month I spent organizing my 65 page petition like a legal brief, to the very letter of the guidelines (right down to the kind of fasteners and tabs to be used) to make it easier and faster to process will earn back the 5 minutes you think I am taking out of your day? 

[Ash.1101 1,755]

Isn't the expedite only for the I-129F? Or do they stream line the interview too?

It'll be interesting if for some reason an interview can't be had at a certain time, or if there ends up being a long AP, or something missing or wrong. 


With that said, yeah apparently as long as you have some paperwork showing you can expedite, there's no reason everyone shouldn't expedite according to this thread. The system will suffer for it, but hey, no one seems to care about anyone else except themselves and their significant other, so why not bog down an already bogged down system!

[Unidentified 2,930]

1 minute ago, Ash.1101 said:

Isn't the expedite only for the I-129F? Or do they stream line the interview too?

It'll be interesting if for some reason an interview can't be had at a certain time, or if there ends up being a long AP, or something missing or wrong. 


With that said, yeah apparently as long as you have some paperwork showing you can expedite, there's no reason everyone shouldn't expedite according to this thread. The system will suffer for it, but hey, no one seems to care about anyone else except themselves and their significant other, so why not bog down an already bogged down system!

People don't care about others anymore. Suddenly everyone is just selfish. 

[Ash.1101 1,755]

5 minutes ago, ali1632 said:

 

Maybe the month I spent organizing my 65 page petition like a legal brief, to the very letter of the guidelines (right down to the kind of fasteners and tabs to be used) to make it easier and faster to process will earn back the 5 minutes you think I am taking out of your day? 

I don't know how many pages mine was as I didn't count. But be careful, sometimes they won't even look at too much info. There have been people who have received RFE's for things they have sent because the people doing the adjudicating couldn't find it in all of the papers they sent, even if they were tabbed and separated into categories. In these cases the adjudicator doesn't want to deal with a lot of papers, so they RFE for what they don't see, and now they only have to deal with maybe 4 papers.

At the end of the day, it's easier for the adjudicator to skim through a smaller packet and see enough and approve it, than to go through a book, get annoyed by it and go DONE, RFE.

Edited January 8, 2017 by Ash.1101

[Boiler 43,429]

3 minutes ago, Ash.1101 said:

Isn't the expedite only for the I-129F? Or do they stream line the interview too?

It'll be interesting if for some reason an interview can't be had at a certain time, or if there ends up being a long AP, or something missing or wrong. 


With that said, yeah apparently as long as you have some paperwork showing you can expedite, there's no reason everyone shouldn't expedite according to this thread. The system will suffer for it, but hey, no one seems to care about anyone else except themselves and their significant other, so why not bog down an already bogged down system!

You need to expedite each stage.

[Ash.1101 1,755]

Just now, Boiler said:

You need to expedite each stage.

Ah okay that makes sense. And it'll make things more interesting in the long run I guess. While I understand the OP has a super important non-refundable ticket. K-1's one of the quickest processing there is, it's kind of amusing to see how all of this goes down.

[geowrian 22,335]

1 hour ago, ali1632 said:

Severe financial loss to company or individual: We do not know what "severe" means to them, but it seems to be less than a week's unpaid vacation. This criteria is about an actual dollar amount that is documented. It is not about whether or not the individual will suffer because of that loss. This is as black and white as tax law. It has nothing to do with hardship or anguish or percent of income or whether you can afford to take that loss in stride; it only matters whether you can meet the burden of proof to document that a specific amount of money is definitely contingent on the timing of the decision. Honestly I don't even know if it matters if the loss was preventable by the individual.

I have to disagree here. As you noted, we don't know what "severe" means to USCIS. Does it require a financial hardship? Does it require a minimum dollar amount or percentage of income? We don't know...and as such, I don't think it's correct to say that it does NOT have any such requirement. It's likely up to the officer's discretion after taking into account all of the data. Yes, somebody got one for a vacation. We don't know the exact circumstances for that person. Anyway, I don't think it's just about meeting the burden of proof to document a loss. Yes, I think that is necessary. But the loss still needs to be severe. As I stated previously, I wish you luck, but I doubt your loss would be considered severe in most people's eyes.

[geowrian 22,335]

46 minutes ago, ali1632 said:

Maybe the month I spent organizing my 65 page petition like a legal brief, to the very letter of the guidelines (right down to the kind of fasteners and tabs to be used) to make it easier and faster to process will earn back the 5 minutes you think I am taking out of your day? 

Just as an FYI - front loading you petition has pros and cons. Generally, unless there is a particular issue you want to address in your case beforehand (i.e. addressing flags or from very high-fraud countries), front loading is probably not to your benefit.

Edited January 8, 2017 by geowrian

[ali1632 10]

3 hours ago, geowrian said:

I have to disagree here. As you noted, we don't know what "severe" means to USCIS. Does it require a financial hardship? Does it require a minimum dollar amount or percentage of income? We don't know...and as such, I don't think it's correct to say that it does NOT have any such requirement. It's likely up to the officer's discretion after taking into account all of the data. Yes, somebody got one for a vacation. We don't know the exact circumstances for that person. Anyway, I don't think it's just about meeting the burden of proof to document a loss. Yes, I think that is necessary. But the loss still needs to be severe. As I stated previously, I wish you luck, but I doubt your loss would be considered severe in most people's eyes.

Point taken - it's true that if there are additional criteria that fall under a judgment call, we don't know about them. 

 

3 hours ago, geowrian said:

Just as an FYI - front loading you petition has pros and cons. Generally, unless there is a particular issue you want to address in your case beforehand (i.e. addressing flags or from very high-fraud countries), front loading is probably not to your benefit.

This is scary and confusing. If the instructions ask for evidence of this and that, and you provide it all at once, instead of waiting to be asked for it, why should that hurt my case? I didn't include anything superfluous, just personal affidavits, a few photos, evidence of meeting, and evidence of relationship, plus the identity docs and divorce documentation. This is the minimum, right? 

Edited January 8, 2017 by ali1632
spelling

[geowrian 22,335]

1 hour ago, ali1632 said:

Point taken - it's true that if there are additional criteria that fall under a judgment call, we don't know about them. 

 

This is scary and confusing. If the instructions ask for evidence of this and that, and you provide it all at once, instead of waiting to be asked for it, why should that hurt my case? I didn't include anything superfluous, just personal affidavits, a few photos, evidence of meeting, and evidence of relationship, plus the identity docs and divorce documentation. This is the minimum, right? 

It's not about other criteria, per se. It's more about what criteria they use in interpreting their policy.

 

Nope. If you read the I-129F form or instructions, then note it does not ask for evidence of an ongoing relationship. It only asks for evidence of meeting within the past 2 years. It's a common misunderstanding, but I did want to point that out.

 

The main pro to including evidence of a relationship are that any documents you submit with the I-129F, upon approval, cannot be used by the CO as a means for denial. The document has already been accepted, reviewed, and approved, and therefore the CO cannot say those docs disqualify you. That's why this is sometimes suggested for high-fraud countries or if you have other flags on your case where you want to have it addressed up-front instead of at the embassy.

 

However, there's a couple cons to providing documents that are not requested:

 

1) Potentially increased processing time (more documents to review).

2) Potentially missed relevant documents, resulting in an RFE (i.e. somebody providing 500 pages of proof of a relationship may result in divorce certificate being missed by the CO).

3) Every document you provide can potentially be used as evidence against you. As noted above, the CO cannot deny because of a document alone, but if the interview or other documents conflict with the documentation provided, they may suspect fraud. In another fairly-extreme example, say you provide 500 pages of facebook chats. Normally, the interviewer asks some questions where he doesn't know the answer, but just wants to see how the beneficiary responds and that they have answer. Maybe they ask "what did your fiance give you on your birthday?". Your fiance mighty mistakenly answer about an anniversary gift, prior year's gift, etc. Now, the CO has to make a determination if she was only mistaken or if she is lying or trying to misleading him, or that the relationship isn't really valid. And this is all assuming the 500 pages don't include any red flags within them directly.

 

I'll admit that the cons aren't too common, but the idea is that they (barring a good reason for needing to front load) are an unnecessary risk to your petition. You're literally handing over evidence that can be used against you.

 

I hope that clears up what I meant. I'm sure others can elaborate even further, but that's the abridged version.

[Boiler 43,429]

There have been some interesting threads where too much has been enclosed..

 

Usually Spain would be expected to be relatively easy.

[javadown2 308]

9 hours ago, ali1632 said:

I don't think that is true, it's mostly an automated process. A 5 minute phone call to customer service, and an automated email is triggered. Then your faxed response gets routed to a specialist who can probably review in 2 minutes. That's why it all comes down to documentation: they will decide whether proof is established or not very quickly. Someone who is actually experiencing a medical emergency will certainly get the same consideration. 

 

I would expect that people sending incomplete petitions and triggering RFEs later in the process take far more precious time away from the rest of applicants than a simple expedite request, which is not even handled by the same customer service team.

 

Maybe the month I spent organizing my 65 page petition like a legal brief, to the very letter of the guidelines (right down to the kind of fasteners and tabs to be used) to make it easier and faster to process will earn back the 5 minutes you think I am taking out of your day? 

It's no harm really to try, I guess people are just uptight because your admitting that it's not really an emergent scenario compared to ill fiancée/fiancé or some other life threatening situation. But the folks processing the requests are human and may allow your faster process. The worst case scenario is they do approve it and still not make your timeline, that would suck!

 

I'm with you on having things organized and every document double/triple checked...no RFE's=faster process.

 

I still keep thinking that you really didn't have to go per-say to pick him up in Spain, and that  you shouldn't have purchased it before the visa was issued, even the government warns against this. This is why I personally think it won't be approved. But of course it doesn't hurt to try.