After 5 Months No approval or RFE From USCIS

[islandinthesun 1]

Hello Every One,

I have been following for a few months now and I must say that the members on this site are excellent with providing help and advise to others on their various situations.My husband and I are in situation right now and would very much appreciate the advise and expertise of anyone on here who has an suggestions. I have browsed many topics but cant seem to find a situation quite like ours.

Our situation goes like this, my husband sent in our I130 petition back in September 2014 to the Vermont service center while he was still a Permanent Resident. (We sent the application back then since my husband had proceeded with his application for naturalization and thought this would save us some time with processing when he later upgraded our petition to that of a USC). He used a consultant who prepared the package and included the I130 application forms, our marriage certificate from my home country, my birth certificate as well as his and copies of our passports. Sadly I only found this website after our petition was sent and once I did I realized that the package that was sent off did not include any evidence to support that our marriage was bona fide. I mentioned this to my husband and he stated that the consultant advised that if and when any additional documents are required by USCIS they will make a request for it. Surely this cannot be correct and my husband was very ill informed. Anyway my husband naturalized in February 2015 and therefore made a request that our petition be upgraded based on his naturalization. At the time of the request the CSR from USCIS asked for his name and date of naturalization and indicated that this would be sufficient to facilitate the upgrade. Based on my readings from this website I highly doubted that this would be sufficient and had my husband send in a copy of his naturalization certificate via email just to be on the safe side. In early March of 2015 my husband received a letter from USCIS informing him that our case had been upgraded and that he should use the date of his naturalization as the appropriate benchmark to estimate when he should receive a decision on our case. I understand that the processing time for a USC is 5 months and therefore 5 months from the date of my husband's naturalization would be in July 2015. To this day we have not received any positive information on our case my husband keeps calling but gets the same scripted answer every time he calls. In addition he has also gone to his local senators office who informed him that when he contacted USCIS he was told that the Vermont office is still working on September 2014 cases . I find this very hard to believe as I am on this website every day and have seen several cases from the Vermont office from February and even March that have already been given approvals.

My only regret is that I did not find this website sooner and to do this on our own. I feel like the consultant messed things up from the get go and I am almost certain that we will be receiving an RFE however 5 months has passed and still nothing has been received.

Can anyone please advise on what they suggest our next step should be. We are feeling so lost right now and would appreciate any advise that can be offered.

Thank you

[CallMeShams 34]

Hello Every One,

I have been following for a few months now and I must say that the members on this site are excellent with providing help and advise to others on their various situations.My husband and I are in situation right now and would very much appreciate the advise and expertise of anyone on here who has an suggestions. I have browsed many topics but cant seem to find a situation quite like ours.

Our situation goes like this, my husband sent in our I130 petition back in September 2014 to the Vermont service center while he was still a Permanent Resident. (We sent the application back then since my husband had proceeded with his application for naturalization and thought this would save us some time with processing when he later upgraded our petition to that of a USC). He used a consultant who prepared the package and included the I130 application forms, our marriage certificate from my home country, my birth certificate as well as his and copies of our passports. Sadly I only found this website after our petition was sent and once I did I realized that the package that was sent off did not include any evidence to support that our marriage was bona fide. I mentioned this to my husband and he stated that the consultant advised that if and when any additional documents are required by USCIS they will make a request for it. Surely this cannot be correct and my husband was very ill informed. Anyway my husband naturalized in February 2015 and therefore made a request that our petition be upgraded based on his naturalization. At the time of the request the CSR from USCIS asked for his name and date of naturalization and indicated that this would be sufficient to facilitate the upgrade. Based on my readings from this website I highly doubted that this would be sufficient and had my husband send in a copy of his naturalization certificate via email just to be on the safe side. In early March of 2015 my husband received a letter from USCIS informing him that our case had been upgraded and that he should use the date of his naturalization as the appropriate benchmark to estimate when he should receive a decision on our case. I understand that the processing time for a USC is 5 months and therefore 5 months from the date of my husband's naturalization would be in July 2015. To this day we have not received any positive information on our case my husband keeps calling but gets the same scripted answer every time he calls. In addition he has also gone to his local senators office who informed him that when he contacted USCIS he was told that the Vermont office is still working on September 2014 cases . I find this very hard to believe as I am on this website every day and have seen several cases from the Vermont office from February and even March that have already been given approvals.

My only regret is that I did not find this website sooner and to do this on our own. I feel like the consultant messed things up from the get go and I am almost certain that we will be receiving an RFE however 5 months has passed and still nothing has been received.

Can anyone please advise on what they suggest our next step should be. We are feeling so lost right now and would appreciate any advise that can be offered.

Thank you

Thank you for sharing your experience. I am sorry to hear things have not gone as you would like.

I am glad you were able to upgrade your petition. I had to do something similar.

I am not too familiar with the processing times are the Vermont service center but I can see your concern.

You could do an infopass to speak to someone at the local field office or you could call customer service and request to speak to a supervisor and share your concern as you are wondering what happened.

How were you able to send an e-mail to USCIS via email? Was it through your senator?

[hisempress2013 1]

Hello I know your frustration. when I sent my I-130 it was march of 2013 I didn't get an approval for the petition until Janurary 2014 well over the waiting period. I believe you just have to be patient because if you don't this process rips families apart.

And I am a US Citizen that filed for a Jamaican national I truly believe it don't save you any time far as processing times either. I hope everything goes well.

[islandinthesun 1]

Thank you @ callmeshams and @hisempress2013 for the comforting words, at least there is still a gleamed of hope. My husband did an info pass some time in June I believe and he was informed that the case was being processed and that we should hear something with 15 days. Still nothing positive. If I may add he received a letter in response to a service request that he made stating something along the lines that a visa number had to be available and that the case may take up to a year to process. It was my understanding that USC's do not have to wait for a visa number to be available therefore I do not understand why we would be given that information especially since we received a letter prior stating that the case was upgraded.

Regarding the email sent to USCIS I don't remember clearly where we got the email address to email a copy of the naturalization certificate but it was not through the senator. We did that shortly after calling to request the upgrade. Senator became involved in June.

Patiently waiting

[CallMeShams 34]

Thank you @ callmeshams and @hisempress2013 for the comforting words, at least there is still a gleamed of hope. My husband did an info pass some time in June I believe and he was informed that the case was being processed and that we should hear something with 15 days. Still nothing positive. If I may add he received a letter in response to a service request that he made stating something along the lines that a visa number had to be available and that the case may take up to a year to process. It was my understanding that USC's do not have to wait for a visa number to be available therefore I do not understand why we would be given that information especially since we received a letter prior stating that the case was upgraded.

Regarding the email sent to USCIS I don't remember clearly where we got the email address to email a copy of the naturalization certificate but it was not through the senator. We did that shortly after calling to request the upgrade. Senator became involved in June.

Patiently waiting

You are welcome. There is much frustration with the process.

Something is a miss and it reminds me of something that happened to me. Seems something went awry with change over from a permanent resident to US citizen. I was a permanent resident when I filed the I-130 and after being naturalized I followed the instruction USCIS gave to contact the service center. They sent me the letter I sent them along with my evidence of naturalization but with no acknowledgement that anything would be done. I called customer service and wasn't given a satisfactory response. I enlisted the help of the congressman and he forwarded a letter I wrote where I called into question what they did. It worked in my favor.

See if you can write a letter and have your senator pass it on to the respective USCIS liason person. I think even an e-mail should suffice.

You highlighted an error they made, you right mention you wouldn't be constrained to a visa limit. It may not be applicablen now but USCIS error is grounds for your application to be expedited and they certainly made an error with the visa limit spill post naturalization.

Please keep up aprised of what happens.

[islandinthesun 1]

I will definitely give your recommendations a go and see what comes out of it. Hopefully this will bring us one step closer to an approval. I will update with the outcome. Thanks a million

[Ed & Jessica 0]

Hi to all VJ!

A kind of uplifting advice from you all...

We filed our K1 application for the month of February 2015 we received mail with a received date 27 February 2015 with a receipt no. WAC ...from CSC. As we check our case said your case has been filed... Most of the filers for K1 received their NOA , RFE etc...month of March... Period of time to wait is 5 months...

We are kind of worried what had happen to our application/case?

Please do help us what we need to do for our case!!!

Thank you and God bless us all...

[islandinthesun 1]

Update

I am screaming and happy to report that our case has finally been approved. I am not sure if getting the senator involved assisted. He did follow up and informed that our case was assigned to an officer and that we should have a decision within 30 days. Thank you to all the great members on VJ for your support, now its onto phase 2.