October 2023 I 130 Filers

[seer8 10]

Again, an email (4th one) from VJ saying my i-130 approval estmate is "Any day now!". If I'm not approved by next week Monday, I'm going to try to contact USCIS and ask to speak to a tier 2 officer about the status. 

[WoodlandsFamily 30]

9 hours ago, seer8 said:

Again, an email (4th one) from VJ saying my i-130 approval estmate is "Any day now!". If I'm not approved by next week Monday, I'm going to try to contact USCIS and ask to speak to a tier 2 officer about the status. 

I don't think the VJ timeline is exact unfortunately 😕 hopefully won't be long now 🤞

[H-S 35]

Any update on your parent's cases? i recently received an email saying "we've taken an action on your case" i checked this morning and don't see anything updated, Case status still shows in progress. did anyone else get the same email? if so what does that mean?

Edited February 1 by H-S
spelling

[Cookie88 119]

1 minute ago, H-S said:

Any update on your parent's cases? i recently received an email saying "we've taken an action on your case" i checked this morning and don't see anything updated, still in progress. did anyone else get the same email? if so what does that mean?

 

Did you check the documents tab?

[WoodlandsFamily 30]

2 hours ago, Ara Burton said:

Yeah it's all over the place and quite annoying.

 

I too been checking both sites...I am guessing the VJ site is maybe judging persons who have adjusted status from November 2023 within the US being approved instead of consular processing.

 

Quite frustrating!!

 

I hope it is reduced from 16.5 months for approval.

It is frustrating 😒 I dread to think how long people applying now will wait. We were told 14.5 and it's now 16.5. It hopefully won't be many more weeks now. 

 

[Cookie88 119]

I have noticed they give a margin of 2 weeks ontop of what the actual approval times are. Right now people are getting approved pretty much at the 16 month mark. If we see this go up to 16.5 months then they will probably update their website to start saying 17 months. The cycle will continue until they have made the changes they need to make to start bringing the times down. 

[Ara Burton 50]

17 hours ago, Cookie88 said:

I have noticed they give a margin of 2 weeks ontop of what the actual approval times are. Right now people are getting approved pretty much at the 16 month mark. If we see this go up to 16.5 months then they will probably update their website to start saying 17 months. The cycle will continue until they have made the changes they need to make to start bringing the times down. 

I don't want to be negative but I doubt they are doing anything to reduce processing times.

 

Legal Immigration is not a priority of theirs based on everything I have seen but I am trying to be positive and hope for the best.

[WoodlandsFamily 30]

3 hours ago, Ara Burton said:

I don't want to be negative but I doubt they are doing anything to reduce processing times.

 

Legal Immigration is not a priority of theirs based on everything I have seen but I am trying to be positive and hope for the best.

They're definitely doing September and I've heard of some October 2023. Like you say we will just have to be positive and hope it won't be ages more. 

[seer8 10]

A sixth email from VJ saying "Your approval is past due". The past 5 emails I would check my timeline and it would say that there was not enough timeline stats as to when it would say when it would be approved. Also, on the USCIS myprogress tab, it would be visible and not visible for the past week. The progress changed to 3 months after it was 6 months for the past month in January. Then, there was an update on case status since my NOA1, as there was an action on my case with a date of 2/10/25 as my NOA1 was 10/2/23.

 

APPROVED!!

[OldUser 9,908]

1 hour ago, seer8 said:

A sixth email from VJ saying "Your approval is past due". The past 5 emails I would check my timeline and it would say that there was not enough timeline stats as to when it would say when it would be approved. Also, on the USCIS myprogress tab, it would be visible and not visible for the past week. The progress changed to 3 months after it was 6 months for the past month in January. Then, there was an update on case status since my NOA1, as there was an action on my case with a date of 2/10/25 as my NOA1 was 10/2/23.

 

APPROVED!!

Exactly, none of the estimates are accurate.

[2024 I551 13]

13 minutes ago, OldUser said:

Exactly, none of the estimates are accurate.

Speaking of USCIS estimates mine is saying 12 months, exactly 16 months after I filed. When I first filed the petition brand new, the estimate said just four months.

[WoodlandsFamily 30]

2 hours ago, seer8 said:

A sixth email from VJ saying "Your approval is past due". The past 5 emails I would check my timeline and it would say that there was not enough timeline stats as to when it would say when it would be approved. Also, on the USCIS myprogress tab, it would be visible and not visible for the past week. The progress changed to 3 months after it was 6 months for the past month in January. Then, there was an update on case status since my NOA1, as there was an action on my case with a date of 2/10/25 as my NOA1 was 10/2/23.

 

APPROVED!!

Congratulations 🏆 🎊  I am approved too 😀 9/10/23. Good luck with the next step!! 

[Koops 2]

This is the first time I've made a post, but I just want to let everyone reading know that my standalone spousal  i-130 was approved over the weekend.

 

I've been following this thread in the background for the last few months. This thread, along with the September and August threads helped me keep my sanity over this whole process, so I appreciate everyone who contributed and continues to contribute. Hopefully my small contribution can be a ray of hope to somebody. I expected the i-130 process to be only about 12 months, I didn't expect it to drag out to 16 months! It's been especially frustrating reading about people with AOS requests using i-130/i-485 that were submitted after my PD but still approved months ago - when I first submitted the i-130, the processing time was the same for both standalone and AOS.

 

My PD was 10/11/23, and I was approved on 2/8/25. I submitted online so I'm not sure if there was a specific service center involved. I did end up emailing my Senator 2 weeks ago, but I haven't heard back (yet?), so I'm not sure if that impacted anything. 

 

Fingers crossed that the next steps go smoothly and are quicker! Good luck to everyone!

Edited February 10 by Koops

[OldUser 9,908]

1 hour ago, Koops said:

This is the first time I've made a post, but I just want to let everyone reading know that my standalone spousal  i-130 was approved over the weekend.

 

I've been following this thread in the background for the last few months. This thread, along with the September and August threads helped me keep my sanity over this whole process, so I appreciate everyone who contributed and continues to contribute. Hopefully my small contribution can be a ray of hope to somebody. I expected the i-130 process to be only about 12 months, I didn't expect it to drag out to 16 months! It's been especially frustrating reading about people with AOS requests using i-130/i-485 that were submitted after my PD but still approved months ago - when I first submitted the i-130, the processing time was the same for both standalone and AOS.

 

My PD was 10/11/23, and I was approved on 2/8/25. I submitted online so I'm not sure if there was a specific service center involved. I did end up emailing my Senator 2 weeks ago, but I haven't heard back (yet?), so I'm not sure if that impacted anything. 

 

Fingers crossed that the next steps go smoothly and are quicker! Good luck to everyone!

Thank you for the update and congratulations on approval ! Nowadays approvals take 16-17 months, and your case is a good indication of that.

[Ara Burton 50]

23 hours ago, S2N said:

For what it’s worth post-change-in-administration, I-130 processing per day has sped up. 2/3/25 was the most approved I-130s since July 2024 according to other corners of the internet.

 

You can track the stats at track my visa now (linked is being censored as spam, not sure why since it’s just pulling from the USCIS API.)

 

I’m not sure I quite buy it, but there’s a popular theory that with Trump ending a lot of the humanitarian programs, resources will be freed up for I-130s as USCIS doesn’t do much in the way of enforcement so there’s not all that much else they can work on.

 

I just filed in January and we’re planning on waiting the 2 years for an IR-1 regardless of when the I-130 gets approved for both immigration and non-immigration reasons, so 16 vs. 17 months isn’t that big a deal. If it starts getting to 20+ months we’d be annoyed though because it’d change planning on a few things.

 

 

I hear the same thing too about cases going faster unde trump for that exact reason.

 

We will see. My 16months is in March 2025.