The RFE Master List

[NN1980 0]

Hi Guys,

I finally received my RFE letter today in the email after 8 days.

They want more proof of the relationship. I am surprised because I sent them pictures, chat logs, email, and phone cards to them.

Do you think they want more pictures, email and chat logs? I will go ahead and send some more pictures, email, and phone cards to see if that should do it.

[Nao 0]

Hi Guys,

I finally received my RFE letter today in the email after 8 days.

They want more proof of the relationship. I am surprised because I sent them pictures, chat logs, email, and phone cards to them.

Do you think they want more pictures, email and chat logs? I will go ahead and send some more pictures, email, and phone cards to see if that should do it.

Hi NN1980.

Wow... I am surprised that they RFEd you for more proof of the relationship...

It seems that the evidences of meeting within the past two years are more important than proof of the relationship.... Well, anyway, I sent in copies of cards such as birthday card and valentine's day card, gift receipt(I sent my fiancee gifts several times from online stores. He sent me gifts too.), letters which are actually mailed to each other(not a copy of an e-mail), call history as well as copies of e-mails and pictures. If you have those additional documents, they may also help.

Anyway, with reagard to our RFE letter. we have not received an e-mail notice yet.... My fiancee has already signed up to receive an e-mail notice six months ago.... (We expected to hear CSC's decision sooner.... Now we are outside of normal processing time....) Our case has been updated for the past two days without us calling....So, somebody must have looked into our case....

Yea, we will wait to call back till the end of this week because we were told to call back in a week if we do not receive an RFE letter by then..... But, we will call on Thursday because they it seems like they do not work on Friday...lol When we called them two days in a row last week, they told us nothing happens over night.... Well, we know, but something could have happened over this seven months of a wait....Oh well, we will call them back on Thursday if nothing happens by then.

Thanks for your advice, NN1980.

Good luck on collecting documents.

Nao

[ELW 5]

NN1980, sorry about the RFE. Be sure to send in some SOLID proof of meeting, because that is the important thing at this stage, NOT of ongoing relationship. Send them things like more photos together of course, plane tickets, itinerary, traveler check encasement receipts, hotel bills, etc. Anything showing your name and address in the foreign country showing both of you were at the same place at the same time. Send again all pages in your passport and any visa paperwork. Read carefully the RFE notice and send them exactly what they ask.

Nao good luck with getting the RFE notice soon.

[debbylyn 0]

NN1980....you said you sent in pictures, chat logs, email, and phone cards ...that is all considered secondary evidence which can be used to supplement primary evidence of meeting in person. What they will be looking for is concrete proof of a meeting in the last two years such as... itineraries and boarding passes from flights, copies of passport pages showing entry stamps into the US or into the fiance/fiancee's country, copies of hotel bills,credit card statements from purchases, or copies of withdrawal slips from the ATM machine matched up bank statements , anything that says...yes...that person was surely in that place at that time!

[Nao 0]

NN1980....you said you sent in pictures, chat logs, email, and phone cards ...that is all considered secondary evidence which can be used to supplement primary evidence of meeting in person. What they will be looking for is concrete proof of a meeting in the last two years such as... itineraries and boarding passes from flights, copies of passport pages showing entry stamps into the US or into the fiance/fiancee's country, copies of hotel bills,credit card statements from purchases, or copies of withdrawal slips from the ATM machine matched up bank statements , anything that says...yes...that person was surely in that place at that time!

Hi ELW. Thanks for your wish. We hope to receive RFE soon. Well, we hope that they are just kidding us and approve our case all the sudden. lol

Hi NN1980, did you send pics and phone cards as proof of meeting within the past two years? If so, you need solid evidences as everyone else here says. We sent in both evidences of meeting within the past two years such as copies of flight tickets, student visa and passport and evidences of our ongoing relationship such as call history and gift receipts. You should read your letter carefully so that you know exactly what they want.

Anyway, I have one question:

So, when they send out RFE letter, does the case status online change from "case received and pending?"

Good Luck!

Nao

[NN1980 0]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the advice, but I had already sent in my itinerary, all my passport pages, and even my boarding passes in my original I-129F package. I did not stay in a hotel when I was in my fiance's home country and for obvious reasons I could not use my credit card there so those items were ruled out. The only thing I could think of that they wanted more evidence for was more pictures that were taken in front of signs and landmarks in the country to show I was there, phone cards, and chat logs, but we'll see how this goes. I'm assuming that they are pretty sometimes picky when your fiance is from a particular country because of high fraud rates from that country and single out a person for an RFE, but I think these items should be good enough since I sent the original evidence in my I-129F.

[ELW 5]

So, when they send out RFE letter, does the case status online change from "case received and pending?"

The case status online changes to:

"Current Status: We mailed you a notice requesting additional evidence."

"On (date), we mailed a notice requesting additional evidence and/or information in this case. Please follow the instructions on the notice to submit the evidence and/or information requested. This case will be held in suspense until we either receive the evidence or the opportunity to submit it expires. Once you submit the information and/or evidence requested, you will be notified by mail when a decision is made, or if the office needs something further from you. If you move while this case is pending, call customer service."

NN1980, besides the additional evidence, we also RE-SENT all the other evidence, like the same photos (there were only 6 photos of us together in existence at that time), passport pages, etc. I also wrote a cover letter certifying that we had met on such and such dates and describing every bit of evidence proving it, all attached paperwork. I suggest you write an explanation letter how you stayed with your fiance so don't have hotel receipts, etc.

Nao if your case status did not change online, here's hoping it was indeed a mixup and you will get approved soon!

[Nao 0]

So, when they send out RFE letter, does the case status online change from "case received and pending?"

The case status online changes to:

"Current Status: We mailed you a notice requesting additional evidence."

"On (date), we mailed a notice requesting additional evidence and/or information in this case. Please follow the instructions on the notice to submit the evidence and/or information requested. This case will be held in suspense until we either receive the evidence or the opportunity to submit it expires. Once you submit the information and/or evidence requested, you will be notified by mail when a decision is made, or if the office needs something further from you. If you move while this case is pending, call customer service."

NN1980, besides the additional evidence, we also RE-SENT all the other evidence, like the same photos (there were only 6 photos of us together in existence at that time), passport pages, etc. I also wrote a cover letter certifying that we had met on such and such dates and describing every bit of evidence proving it, all attached paperwork. I suggest you write an explanation letter how you stayed with your fiance so don't have hotel receipts, etc.

Nao if your case status did not change online, here's hoping it was indeed a mixup and you will get approved soon!

Hi ELW.

Yea... we hope that it was a mixup...

Our case was updated twice this week. (We were told that we have RFE request and should receive a letter in a week last Thursday. It will be a week since then....) However, we do not see our case status change.....We are gonna call tomorrow and see what is going on.... It will be 7 months since we sumbited our original packet and we have not heard anything since then.....

[NN1980 0]

So, when they send out RFE letter, does the case status online change from "case received and pending?"

The case status online changes to:

"Current Status: We mailed you a notice requesting additional evidence."

"On (date), we mailed a notice requesting additional evidence and/or information in this case. Please follow the instructions on the notice to submit the evidence and/or information requested. This case will be held in suspense until we either receive the evidence or the opportunity to submit it expires. Once you submit the information and/or evidence requested, you will be notified by mail when a decision is made, or if the office needs something further from you. If you move while this case is pending, call customer service."

NN1980, besides the additional evidence, we also RE-SENT all the other evidence, like the same photos (there were only 6 photos of us together in existence at that time), passport pages, etc. I also wrote a cover letter certifying that we had met on such and such dates and describing every bit of evidence proving it, all attached paperwork. I suggest you write an explanation letter how you stayed with your fiance so don't have hotel receipts, etc.

Nao if your case status did not change online, here's hoping it was indeed a mixup and you will get approved soon!

Hi ELW.

Yea... we hope that it was a mixup...

Our case was updated twice this week. (We were told that we have RFE request and should receive a letter in a week last Thursday. It will be a week since then....) However, we do not see our case status change.....We are gonna call tomorrow and see what is going on.... It will be 7 months since we sumbited our original packet and we have not heard anything since then.....

My case status online did not change as well when I got the RFE email. I'm assuming they don't change that, but just send out the RFE email. You should be getting the letter soon, if they touched your case then that means they may have just sent it out. For example, they touched my case a day after I received the email even though they said that they sent it out on May 3rd they touched it on May 6th which I'm assuming they sent it out then and then it arrived on May 13th.

[ELW 5]

When we received the email about the RFE, our case status changed online too. Apparently it does not happen in all cases. That's the govt online systems for ya!

[Nao 0]

When we received the email about the RFE, our case status changed online too. Apparently it does not happen in all cases. That's the govt online systems for ya!

Mmmmm.

Ic...

So, the case status online does not always change....

But, we have not even received an e-mail notice about RFE....That is odd....

I think when we call tomorrow, we will ask whether the RFE letter was already sent out or not....

I will let you know what they say tomorrow.

Thanks

Nao

[Nao 0]

Hello

So, my fiancee called CSC today. Fortunately, we got a helpful officer today. (Last time he called, a mean officer told him not to call back for a month!!! What the hell is wrong with her???) She actually remembered talking to him a while ago as faily helpful and easy to work with. He also recognized her voice. (He has been calling them since the end of March, so he can pretty much recognize officers by their voice. lol)

Anyway, according to her, we do have an RFE request. She tracked exactly where our RFE letter was at.... Then, she told us that it is not stuck with an adjudicator but with a clerical staff....Damn!!!! So, it takes over a week for them just to send the letter out? This entire process has been ridiculos for us, but this is the most ridiculous thing we have ever heard...So, my fiancee explained the whole situation and asked her to send out the e-mail to the floor to move our case forward and to look into our case.She told us that she would do that. We think she would most likely help us out to have our RFE letter sent out because we think she is the one whom we asked to move our case forward from the storage room in the end of March and it was when our case started to move forward. We hope she is the same lady and helps us out get out of this nightmare.

There was one thing that she said to which we got very upset: "you are not outside of the normal processing time yet." We have been waiting seven months now to hear a word from them. When the processing time is updated next week, we will definately be outside of the normal processing time by about 20 days. But, she said that processing time means that it is time for your application to be processed. Since our case is being worked on, we are not outside of the processing time......Nonsense. We just did not ask her anything about this because we know that if we call an ombudsman when the next processing time is up on the website, they will consider us outside of the processing time and look into our case. It was a good idea that we sent a form to an ombudsman ahead of time. Now, we know who is in charge of our case at CIS and we can contact him over the phone to ask for help. We are gonna ask him to follow up on our case till it gets approved and sent out to NVC.

Anyway, the officer was nicer than most officers there. She listened my fiancee explain that this whole process has been a horrible experience to us. She, then, said that she was very sorry. We had never had an officer who listended to us like this and apporogize on what is going on with our situation. This, at least, makes me feel better a little bit....

Lastly, one extremely good news to me: my fiancee will come to visit me in Japan for about a week in July. Yay☆

Last time we met each other was in Vancouver, Canada in December 2007. We had a Christmas trip there together.

He also visited me in Japan June 2007. I think I will take him to Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka this time.

I am really excited about it.

So, our plan here is 1). Receive our RFE letter by the end of May. 2). Send our RFE back to CSC by the 10th of June. 3). Hear their decision by the end of June. Does this sounds reasonable timeframe for us to ?

Thanks

Nao

((Our timeline))

10/09/2007: I-129F Petition sent out via UPS

10/19/2007: NOA1

No touch till the end of March

03/24/2008: First call to CSC (RFE trick)

03/25/2008: Case updated

04/02/2008: Case handed to an adjudicator

04/18/2008: Sent a letter to a Congressman

04/22/2008: Case is at the security check

Sent a letter to U.S. Senators

Sent a form to CIS ombudsman

05/01/2008: Case is still at the security check

05/08/2008: The adjudicator wants to RFE us....

(RFE trick turned out to be a real RFE.....OH NOOO. )

05/15/2008: RFE letter is stuck with a clerical staff

We are outside of normal processing time

*We got the timeline above by calling CSC via RFE trick.

//2008: RFE letter received

//2008: RFE letter sent back to CSC

//2008: Case Approved!! NOA2 (No more RFE, please)

//2008: Case received at NVC

//2008: Case left NVC

//2008: Case received at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo

//2008: Packet3

//2008: Parket4

//2008: Interview at Embassy

//2008: K1 visa in hand!!

//2008: back in the U.S. Yay!!

[ELW 5]

So happy you got a nice officer. I think your timeframe is perfectly reasonable and best wishes to get the approval before the end of June. Have a great time together in July!

[Nao 0]

So happy you got a nice officer. I think your timeframe is perfectly reasonable and best wishes to get the approval before the end of June. Have a great time together in July!

Hi ELW.

Thank you a lot for your message.

I always feel so relieved to receive your message.

Yes, it was sooo cool that we got a helpful officer.

We also hope we get the approval before the end of June. But, we try not to expect too much. We are kind of paranoid now...

Anyway, can I ask for your advice when we receive an RFE letter?

I hope we receive it soon.

I cannot wait to see my fiancee in July.

It will be so much fun trying to plan the trip

Thank you again.

Have a great weekend.

Nao

[BexandAlan 0]

Hello VJ Friends

I wanted to update the RFE thread with our experience just in case it might help future filers.

Firstly we sent our package at the beginning of Feb but sadly USPS lost it and it never reached VSC - kind of irrelevant to this situation but just setting the scene ....

We re-sent a new package at the beginning of March and received NOA1 dated 3rd March 2008 (Yey) and then on the 6th March we received an RFE (Boo) and our whole package was returned to us. Unfortunately Alan had sent a cheque with the wrong amount - no biggy just a silly error. I had read on here that it wasn't a normal thing to get an RFE for and was surprised that they had registered our application (NOA1) and then returned the whole application to us. The way I understood it they should have done one or the other but not both. Well anyway we sent everything back the same day with the paperwork and new cheque enclosed. On the 12th March 2008 we received a new NOA1 with a different receipt number to the first one!

We put both numbers on the USCIS website to track them and called the RFE line to see if they could establish which number our application was actually coupled with. Alan spoke to 3 different people who had never heard of anyone being in this situation before and they advised us to make an infopass appointment in order to get it sorted. We never made an infopass due to the fact that it meant Alan would have to take a day off work to go and see them. He called USCIS again a couple of times and was eventually told that if there were two numbers they would be interlinked anyway so not to worry. They were really unhelpful on the phone line and because no one could give us any experience of this situation we did worry that it might cause us problems along the way.

ANYWAY...

We received our NOA2 on the 12th May 2008 for the second receipt number. We had no problems with the fact they had registered us twice and the 1st number has remained untouched since 6th March 2008 . The moral of the story is don't worry so much. Thats a lot easier to say now in all honesty, you read so often on VJ that people are held up because of problems caused by the USCIS. Well we were lucky and they used some sense I guess.

Good luck on your journeys

Bex xxx