Our approval letter sent, but...we never received it!

[dasha 0]

Hi everyone...and happy new year :-)

OK, so we sent in the petition to remove the conditions on my husband's green card in February last year...he did his biometrics on March 28...and then we settled in for the supposedly very long wait to hear something.

As of today we still hadn't heard anything, and he's planning to go out of the country pretty soon for a couple of months, so I decided to check on the petition status since his letter that allows him to travel/work while waiting for the conditions to be lifted would expire while he's out of the country.

I finally located the USCIS's page to check the application status, put in his number, and this is what came back:

"On July 21, 2008, we mailed you a notice that we have approved this CRI89 PETITION TO REMOVE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT RESIDENT STATUS RECEIVED. Please follow any instructions on the notice."

But we never received any such notice. (Believe me, we definitely would not have overlooked this particular piece of mail!)

So now, I'm confused...does the message about the petition status mean that we're not being required to have another interview and they've just outright approved the lifting of the conditions? (Since we never received the notice, we don't know what was included in it, of course.)

If that's what it means, then would the new green card have been included in the envelope with the notice (that we didn't receive)? If not, shouldn't it have been sent by now?

If an interview was required, the notice wouldn't have said that they had approved the petition, right?

I assume I should/can call the USCIS customer service number to verify the status and tell them we never received the notice...but am just wondering if anyone has any thoughts/insights/info on our situation in the meanwhile. My biggest worry is that there's going to be some sort of problem with my husband's status since it's been over 5 months since they supposedly sent the notice and we haven't "followed the instructions" on it...especially since we haven't received the new green card yet (though maybe that was also lost in the mail?).

Thanks for any response...

Deb

Edited January 3, 2009 by dasha

[pure8heart 0]

Hi everyone...and happy new year :-)

OK, so we sent in the petition to remove the conditions on my husband's green card in February last year...he did his biometrics on March 28...and then we settled in for the supposedly very long wait to hear something.

As of today we still hadn't heard anything, and he's planning to go out of the country pretty soon for a couple of months, so I decided to check on the petition status since his letter that allows him to travel/work while waiting for the conditions to be lifted would expire while he's out of the country.

I finally located the USCIS's page to check the application status, put in his number, and this is what came back:

"On July 21, 2008, we mailed you a notice that we have approved this CRI89 PETITION TO REMOVE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT RESIDENT STATUS RECEIVED. Please follow any instructions on the notice."

But we never received any such notice. (Believe me, we definitely would not have overlooked this particular piece of mail!)

So now, I'm confused...does the message about the petition status mean that we're not being required to have another interview and they've just outright approved the lifting of the conditions? (Since we never received the notice, we don't know what was included in it, of course.)

If that's what it means, then would the new green card have been included in the envelope with the notice (that we didn't receive)? If not, shouldn't it have been sent by now?

If an interview was required, the notice wouldn't have said that they had approved the petition, right?

I assume I should/can call the USCIS customer service number to verify the status and tell them we never received the notice...but am just wondering if anyone has any thoughts/insights/info on our situation in the meanwhile. My biggest worry is that there's going to be some sort of problem with my husband's status since it's been over 5 months since they supposedly sent the notice and we haven't "followed the instructions" on it...especially since we haven't received the new green card yet (though maybe that was also lost in the mail?).

Thanks for any response...

Deb

It has something to do with language. Doesn't mean that your application was approved and card was ordered. Perhaps this excerpt clarifies it better then me. Link is

http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/update_i751_060508.pdf

[dasha 0]

Hi everyone...and happy new year :-)

OK, so we sent in the petition to remove the conditions on my husband's green card in February last year...he did his biometrics on March 28...and then we settled in for the supposedly very long wait to hear something.

As of today we still hadn't heard anything, and he's planning to go out of the country pretty soon for a couple of months, so I decided to check on the petition status since his letter that allows him to travel/work while waiting for the conditions to be lifted would expire while he's out of the country.

I finally located the USCIS's page to check the application status, put in his number, and this is what came back:

"On July 21, 2008, we mailed you a notice that we have approved this CRI89 PETITION TO REMOVE CONDITIONS OF PERMANENT RESIDENT STATUS RECEIVED. Please follow any instructions on the notice."

But we never received any such notice. (Believe me, we definitely would not have overlooked this particular piece of mail!)

So now, I'm confused...does the message about the petition status mean that we're not being required to have another interview and they've just outright approved the lifting of the conditions? (Since we never received the notice, we don't know what was included in it, of course.)

If that's what it means, then would the new green card have been included in the envelope with the notice (that we didn't receive)? If not, shouldn't it have been sent by now?

If an interview was required, the notice wouldn't have said that they had approved the petition, right?

I assume I should/can call the USCIS customer service number to verify the status and tell them we never received the notice...but am just wondering if anyone has any thoughts/insights/info on our situation in the meanwhile. My biggest worry is that there's going to be some sort of problem with my husband's status since it's been over 5 months since they supposedly sent the notice and we haven't "followed the instructions" on it...especially since we haven't received the new green card yet (though maybe that was also lost in the mail?).

Thanks for any response...

Deb

It has something to do with language. Doesn't mean that your application was approved and card was ordered. Perhaps this excerpt clarifies it better then me. Link is

http://www.uscis.gov/files/article/update_i751_060508.pdf

Thanks very much for that link. It does explain much of what I was wondering about. There are still some things I don't understand, though.

First, why didn't we ever receive that notice they supposedly mailed July 21? We haven't changed our address...so I'm still just guessing that it was lost in the mail.

More importantly, aside from the misleading wording included in the status report of our case, it also said "Please follow any instructions on the notice." Since we never received the notice, I don't know what those instructions were. Anyone else who received this very same poorly worded notice that their petition had been approved (when all it really meant was that it had been transferred to the other office)...can you tell me what "instructions" were included in that notice? I'm wondering if our not having completed those instructions (because we never received them) has somehow hampered the progress of our petition.

I will call the USCIS support center on Monday...but any info anyone can share before then will help us to have a less anxious weekend :-)

Thanks,

Deb

[Kathryn41 3,205]

Definitely make an INFOPASS appointment and get this cleared up. To me it sounds like you were approved and you should have received your 10 year card. It may be that they didn't send your card or it got lost in the mail. Print out a copy of the online notification and bring it with you. Good luck in getting things sorted out soon. At the very least, your husband should be able to get the I-551 stamp in his passport so that he can travel. You may want to verify the address that they have on file for you. I would do this in person at the USCIS office rather than rely on the Misinformation Line which 9 times out of 10 gives you the wrong information. Good luck.