Difference between N400 submission online or by mail?

[ThaOne 101]

19 hours ago, cyanmavi said:

Make sure to use Internet Explorer as your browser if you want online filing to go smoothly. If you have to use another browser, be ready to submit all your documents at once and without signing out in between documents. Even then it is a crapshoot.

 

A single document cannot be larger than 6MB.

 

I would have done mail if it wasn't for COVID-19, you have much more control over the process and organization of your documents.

 

Online or by mail does not affect the speed of the process, that is determined by local office.

 

 

Sorry your experience was that bad, but there is nothing better than filing online.

1- If you miss a check mark it will let you know

2- if you don't attach a sufficient amount of documents, it will let you know

3- if you don't meet the 3 months residency in the state before filing it will let you know

4- when I filed online, then next day after they received it, I had a notice for my biometrics (pre-COVID). If I had mailed it, by the time it got there, someone typed it in, I would have probably waited 2 weeks if lucky.

5- There is no mailing fee.

6- worked well with chrome (I have actually read many advice from people saying NOT to use internet explorer)

7- there are more mistakes that can be made if you manually write stuff. Another human will be reading all your stuff and typing all that him/herself in their computer. You take away that extra step from them firstly, plus there are risks of typos or not being able to read your writing well. Also remember that for some people from other countries numbers are written slightly differently. The number "1" written in europe in most countries has an horizontal bar at the bottom. Most americans think that's a "seven". The thousands separator and decimal separator is reversed. In the US thousands (millions, billions...) are separated by "," (comma). In most countries that's the decimal separator...

Seems trivial, but sometimes old habits creep back in. Is it the end of the world? No but why take the risk of having your case delayed because of such things, get RFEs, mistakes, losses?

[cyanmavi 101]

22 hours ago, Luckycuds said:

Online is faster- you get the NOA1 same or next day while if you filed by mail your package still would be in transit.

I was talking about the speed of the whole process. Getting your NOA1 in one day or five days does not matter when your local office is taking a year to process applications.

[SusieQQQ 11,584]

1 hour ago, cyanmavi said:

I was talking about the speed of the whole process. Getting your NOA1 in one day or five days does not matter when your local office is taking a year to process applications.

Maybe, but my oath ceremony was nearly a month later than the people who interviewed just a day before me at the FO - I clearly missed some kind of scheduling cutoff - so that may matter to some people. (And yes my interview was one day short of a year to the date after submission.)

[ThaOne 101]

You truly are missing the point, as the other user pointed out. 1 day, can play such a significant impact in delaying your whole process in regular circumstances. As pointed you may file or they may receive it 1 day later than someone in the same office and it may end up being a huge difference. Plus did you miss the part where if you file by mail it will at least increase the time because of when they receive it, and everything needs to be typed by a HUMAN being? Not because you don't want to type it in that it means someone else has to type it in. in a day or 5 days as you specify 1000 or more new applications can get ahead of you, that will make the difference between an application taking a year to process and a year and 2 months.

Anyway, to everyone else I would highly encourage to file online. On a personal note had I filed by paper, I probably would not have had my biometrics done yet due to COVID. I filed just before the lockdowns and got my biometrics done and a couple of weeks later came the lockdown. 

To others who care if the whole process will take a year and a half versus just a year, file online. When you file your taxes, if you file them online if you are entitled to a refund you get it 2 weeks later. If you file it by mail it takes 6 to 8 weeks. This is 2020. There is no doubt doing everything electronically is way faster than by mail.

Edited September 22, 2020 by ThaOne

[Shawn&Jodie 14]

Online was the way to go.  I remember the old days of having to fill out everything and send in a large packet.  We finished it in about 30 minutes, mainly because we kept forgetting job start dates and such.  We already had all our files saved as pdfs so it was easy.  We are on 5 year so we only needed green card, marriage cert.  and I added some extras to the "extra evidence" section just because we thought we would need it and I had already had the files ready. 

 

Deff recommend online.