Some Math Estimates

[Zachris 5]

Elsewhere on this forum you can find an interview with a former USCIS employee about the visa petition review process. The interview is from 2007, and the employee quit in 2005. So, the information it provides is a bit old. Still, it is the only information we have. In that interview, we are told that the typical K-1 petition takes about 15 minutes to adjudicate. To be conservative, I am going to up that estimate to 30 minutes per case.

Now, let us assume that there is a hypothetical CSC employee working 5 hours per day just on K-1 petitions. I assume that this "worker" takes lunch, wastes a normal amount of time socializing (not a criticism, just reality), and may have a few other things to do. So, this worker could send out 10 NOA2's per day -- on average.

That amounts to 50 NOA2's per 5 day work week. And, 200 NOA2's per month.

This, again, assumes just one CSC worker dedicated to the K-1 petitions. There is probably no one dedicated solely to K-1, but I am assuming that under normal conditions we could assemble this hypothetical worker from normal staff activities.

From Igor's list, we can see that as of March 31 there are 808 K-1 petitions from VisaJourney members awaiting review at the CSC -- that is the reported data May 2012 through March 2013. Now, let us assume that VisaJourney participating forum membership represents only 10% of the actual K-1 petitions. I have no way to know the actual percentage, but this number seems reasonable to me. However, the estimates I am about to calculate might be widely inaccurate if this percentage is off.

So, by this estimate, there are 8080 petitions awaiting adjudication for NOA2.

Going through these petitions will take our one hypothetical worker 808 work days. At 5 work days per week, that is 162 weeks. At 4 weeks per month, that is 40.4 months. At 50 work weeks per year, that is 3.3 years!

Now, if there are two hypothetical workers, we can divide those numbers in half: 404 work days, 81 weeks, 20.2 months, 1.6 years

Three hypothetical workers yield: 270 days, 54 weeks, 13.5 months, or 1.1 years.

Four hypothetical workers yield: 202 days, 40 weeks, 10.1 months or 0.8 years.

Five hypothetical workers yield: 162 days, 32 weeks, 8 months or 0.6 years.

Six hypothetical workers yield: 135 days, 27 weeks, 6.7 months or 0.5 years.

These numbers would be the waiting times for someone who had received their NOA1 on April 1, 2013. We have recently heard on this forum that CSC is giving, over the telephone, estimates of one year before NOA2. The USCIS website current provides an "estimated" wait of 6.6 months at CSC.

So, it would seem that CSC has between 3 and 6 "workers" dedicated to the K-1 visa review process.

Now, let's assume that one of those "workers" gets sick or quits unexpectedly. Delays increase proportionately.

Now, I am not saying that it would make our waiting less difficult in terms of our personal relationships, but don't you think it would makes things a bit less frustrating for us if the USCIS could provide these types of data without requiring us to guess?