Timelines

[orangeal 12]

This is America, right? We can speak truth to power? How is it that some people get their citizenship in three months while others have to wait for two years? How did some people get biometrics done in the middle of the pandemic while others had to wait for a year? Allowing for military filings and the fact that each case is unique, it seems ridiculously unfair that there is no managed line for citizenship. Going through the timelines on this website, it seems that the process is chaotic. If you are in Kentucky and other smaller centers, it might take a few weeks. People are jumping the queue, while others must wait in silence without any communication whatsoever from the authorities. What am I missing?

[Crazy Cat 41,974]

33 minutes ago, orangeal said:

This is America, right? We can speak truth to power? How is it that some people get their citizenship in three months while others have to wait for two years? How did some people get biometrics done in the middle of the pandemic while others had to wait for a year? Allowing for military filings and the fact that each case is unique, it seems ridiculously unfair that there is no managed line for citizenship. Going through the timelines on this website, it seems that the process is chaotic. If you are in Kentucky and other smaller centers, it might take a few weeks. People are jumping the queue, while others must wait in silence without any communication whatsoever from the authorities. What am I missing?

How are people jumping the queue?  There is not just one queue for everyone in the United States.  There are queues at each local office.  Some queues are longer than others.

[orangeal 12]

There is a queue for most immigration benefits and you would think that resources would be distributed in such a manner as to balance out the differences in the waiting times for the most important benefit in the system,  particularly in cases where the  imbalance is measured in years! 

Edited March 23, 2021 by orangeal
spelling

[aaron2020 11,651]

You're missing a lot of data.  Data that you don't have access to.  

Have you ever been to the supermarket?  Do people move through each cashier at the same pace?  Or are some lines quicker than others?  Have you noticed that someones they move people around?

Now imagine millions of immigration cases that have to go through various centers.

 

Can things be organized better?  Sure.

Easy for people in line to opine that the supermarket could do a better job managing the lines.  However, you don't know what limitations that the supermarket is operating under.  

It would be very easy to go to a busy ER waiting room and go why aren't they processing people more efficiently.  It's much harder to know what is going on beyond the waiting room in the ER.

 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by aaron2020

[Marieke H 2,512]

1 hour ago, orangeal said:

What am I missing?

What you are missing is that processing times depend on caseload in the local offices.

[YecaCruz 379]

I can only speak for ND when I say that our state only has 3-4 oath ceremonies per YEAR while our neighbor, MN has a few per WEEK and that was pre-pandemic days. So you can imagine how much waiting we did here in the frozen northern tundra. ND would probably be considered a smaller officer so one wonders why?  PLUS instead of being able to interview in Bis, Grand Forks, or Fargo we had to drive 6 hours one way for a 15 minute interview. We DID go the Mall of 'Murica while there so that was cool i guess lol

 

The wait sucks especially when you see "everyone else" zipping through the process and getting to interview in the same darn-tooting city BUUUUT it's a part of the process. Submit the papers, knowing you've done everything needed, wait, and yield to the demands of the process no matter what they are, knowing what the end goal is. 

 

I won't complain in the end. We made it through the process from K1 to US citizenship and won't have to deal with it ever again and I would like to think that allllll that waiting involved refined our resolve in some way.

Edited March 23, 2021 by YecaCruz

[.yana 597]

You get lucky with one thing - unlucky with another and vice versa. 

 

I've been on a long end of the waiting game for all of my cases (AOS, ROC, citizenship) while people who filed in the same field office / Service Center after me got approved within months. So no, it's not always simply geography based. Sometimes your case gets picked up by an officer who is maybe reviews cases a little bit quicker. 

 

Just remember that while immigration process is not always fair, at the end of the day - it is a privilege. And we'll all end up getting our decision one way or another. No reason to compare yourself to others as everyone's circumstances are unique.

[Huckleberry&Koala 184]

2 hours ago, orangeal said:

This is America, right? We can speak truth to power? How is it that some people get their citizenship in three months while others have to wait for two years? How did some people get biometrics done in the middle of the pandemic while others had to wait for a year? Allowing for military filings and the fact that each case is unique, it seems ridiculously unfair that there is no managed line for citizenship. Going through the timelines on this website, it seems that the process is chaotic. If you are in Kentucky and other smaller centers, it might take a few weeks. People are jumping the queue, while others must wait in silence without any communication whatsoever from the authorities. What am I missing?

It is up to local office loads. Some offices are busy as hell. Imagine chaos if uscis move around cases between local offices to balance the loads: would people fly from west coast to east coast, or visa versa, what if a person cannot travel? or what would happen to processing times or how could it even be possible to record/ post processing time? I think behind the scenes operations is more complicated than we think, and sometimes we just need to accept it is what it is. I was in one of the busiest offices while AOSing, and i had to wait like 2 years whereas some people get interview in couple of months. That's just how it works when you need to interview.

[Skyman 324]

I try to assume they are doing the best they can there's a rhyme or reason that just isn't apparent to those of us on this side of the wall.  I kind of assume that my case is sitting there at the NBC because the local office is very much behind and they aren't accepting new cases to be handed over.  I'm hoping that when we move next month it might shock them into action somehow.  

 

The mind does wonder though.  Like I wonder how the processing is organized.  Does each case get assigned to one officer who sees it through?  That might explain why cases at a slow center can't be shuffled to a faster one.  Or perhaps each form or even each page?  The officer in charge of I-130 page 3 is out with covid for 3 weeks so I-130s halt.  I don't know.  I wonder if cases are delayed because they are perceived to be harder to process than others?  I imagine the cases as paper files and big stacks of them are piled onto an officer's desk.  The officer takes a file and starts through it.  But then maybe some officers take one and say, "This is a fat one and is going to take a long time which I don't feel like doing right now." And they slide it into the bottom of the stack.  ???  Then before the stack is finished, another stack gets added and the ones on the bottom sit there until someone does a case inquiry.  ???

[Scandi 4,168]

Since the lockdown last year USCIS seems to have chaos in their system. Before the pandemic N-400 cases were picked up in more or less the same order they were received, everyone got through the process at about the same speed unless their specific case was more difficult for whatever reason. 

 

Now on the other hand processing times are all over the place. At my field office people from late 2019 are still waiting for interviews while people who filed in August 2020 already became citizens.

 

Personally I had to send messages to USCIS about getting the ombudsman involved just to get a simple biometrics appointment, while people who filed months after me already had their bio reused AND had been scheduled for interviews. 

[orangeal 12]

Did you get any joy from your positive actions? What's going on is unfair and it cannot be how it was meant to be! It's like drawing lots. I'm not saying such a large system can work like clockwork. However, the line should be the rule rather than the exception! Immigrants should be speaking up about this. 

[Zoeeeeeee 797]

In some respects though, some of it boils down to us and our choices. Like, I live in LA - big county, loads of immigrants, long wait for my greencard interview. Also, really expensive to buy property or rent, expensive gas, crappy air quality. But I knew all of this before moving there, including the immigration stuff. But, because that's where I want to live (because it's where my husband works), then I have to accept those negatives. Alternatively, I could've moved up to Snomish and done it in half the time.

 

I appreciate that there are sometimes delays behind the scenes, which are frustrating...but we don't know what's causing those delays. I'd rather wait and let USCIS do what it needs to do behind the scenes, rather than stamp my feet and demand it gets done now and get a rejection. 

 

As others have mentioned, immigration isn't a guaranteed right. It's a privilege. So by all means, speak up if you want, but I think it's important to recognize that this isn't Olive Garden...you can get angry and demand to speak to the manager of USCIS, but I still don't think you'll get your meal comped 🤔.

[jskibo 588]

My wife’s CR1 took 7 months, her parents IR5 has been in process since June 2019. 
 

stuff happens, eventually it will get done.