Visa Journey Timelines!

[Captain Ewok 1,857]

I am coming up right now with a way that will better represent estimates for members. Instead of a specific date I am going to have the system give people a date range. This date range will indicate the range of time in which roughly 60-85% of cases are being processed in. Basically this means that you can likely expect your date to fall towards the early date (estimate) however nearly certainly before the longer date in the range. The difficulty is presenting the information in a way that is easy to understand.

[Delicia 1]

Okay, so i did my timeline on Visa Journey and it says that i should get approval on May 30th.

It is June 9th. I know this is just an estimate based on trend but does anyone know if it even comes close to the actual thing.

Don't feel bad, my VJ timeline says March 29, 2008.

[Captain Ewok 1,857]

I have updated the timeline estimated approval algorithm. You can see details here:

http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=132455

[Delicia 1]

Well, now mine is updated to say April 1 - May 3rd.

Capt: I think the formula for the timeline calculations is using the date I-130 is submitted. Perhaps it would be more accurate to just use the NOA-1 date, in this case. Your thoughts?

[Captain Ewok 1,857]

I thought about that but the problem is that there have been very long delays in issuing NOA1's and the dates on them scew things. The USCIS said that the process the petitions in the order that they were received regardless of a delayed NOA1 date. That is the main reason. If the NOA1 dates were consistently printed on time then I would certainly use those dates to eliminate mailing time differences. That said, the mailing differences are probably only a few days.

[Delicia 1]

Actually, I had heard the opposite from USCIS. They told me that they go by the NOA-1 date and theoretically, they should be issuing the NOA-1s based upon the order received. Additionally, the Service Centers seems to be issuing NOA-1s rather timely now (within 1-2 weeks) and the receipting delay that I experiened (107 days to get a NOA-1) seems all in the past.

[Captain Ewok 1,857]

Can anyone confirm this? If we use the NOA1 date it can improve estimates about +/- one day potentially however possibly less due to averaging.

[sara..... 371]

Can anyone confirm this? If we use the NOA1 date it can improve estimates about +/- one day potentially however possibly less due to averaging.

that is pretty much what they told me too.......we sent ours in the first of aug it was receipted in the end of sept.........they flat refused to acknowledge anything except the date receipted i was told thats what is in our system that is the date we go by........so even if they didnt pull mine for extra processing i was still one and half months behind because of their delay of receipting.............

[Delicia 1]

I have been keeping a spreadsheet of dates of I-130 filers for some time. You can find it here. You can see that the last few months, the receipting delay is all but non existent, which is good news.

[Captain Ewok 1,857]

The main key is whether the varation in delta time is much different between the two methods. I will watch this over the next month as the NOA's are brought up to par from the USCIS. If the NOA method proves better I will convert to it. The improvement would likely be minor however if it is better than I want to use it .

As an example for I-129F's the two methods are nearly identical. However for the I-130 the Date Sent is still a little better. Once there are enough data points in the timeline (used in the calcs) that were not effected by receipting delays it may make sense to swap over.