Approved! Stay hopeful

[MyFirefly 0]

I kept a record of every single activity regarding this process with USCIS and maybe it will help some of you that have been waiting for a long time and have no updates on their case, don’t lose hope. 😊 We went 369 days with no activity on our case and then got approved. No rfe or anything (we had a ton of bona fides)

USCIS timeline for I-130 standalone with consular processing:

- [ ] 2023 April 17 - Packet mailed by attorney to phoenix lockbox
- [ ] 2023 April 20 - Priority date (i-797 receipt notice received). Our case was at the Texas service center. 
- [ ] 2023 April 25 - Status changed to “Your case is being actively reviewed by USCIS.”
- [ ] 2023 May to September- at some point during the first 5 months, our case was transferred from Texas to Nebraska service center (not sure when)
- [ ] 2023 August - Our attorney forgot to use the online access code that was mailed to him and it expired (I was not happy) so I made several requests to USCIS for an online account code sent directly to me. 
- [ ] 2023 October 4 - i-797 receipt notice received with our online access code. Our case has been transferred again because this notice says Vermont service center. 
- [ ] 2023 November 3 - during October, I watched the Myprogress tab go from 3 weeks to 2 and then 1 week. On November 3rd, the Myprogress tab on our account changed to “your case is taking longer than expected” (I am aware that this information page is useless as far as we know). 
- [ ] 2024 April 29 - received an email  from USCIS saying “We have taken action on your case”. I logged in to view my case and on the case status page it said “Your case is being actively reviewed by USCIS.” However it was updated to April 29, 2024(today) so I checked the documents tab and there it was… the I-130approval.pdf
 

[Miahammy 0]

Congrats! My husband I and are Tunisians also. I filed for him April 26 2024, hoping for a speedy process. Hopefully getting an interview at the Tunis embassy will be quick for you guys. I can’t imagine it would be too long

[MyFirefly 0]

5 hours ago, Miahammy said:

Congrats! My husband I and are Tunisians also. I filed for him April 26 2024, hoping for a speedy process. Hopefully getting an interview at the Tunis embassy will be quick for you guys. I can’t imagine it would be too long

 

Thanks!

 

The NVC process has been really fast so far and also a much better experience than the USCIS. The NVC is very transparent with their process and sends you emails/notifications every step of the way. They also send you instructional emails that are really helpful.

 

I will add a reply to this topic with the NVC timeline.

 

Good luck to you

[MyFirefly 0]

Here is our timeline for all the steps at the NVC:

• 2024 May 4 - Welcome letter received from NVC and we logged into the account on the CEAC (Consular Electronic Application Center) website.
• 2024 May 5 - Paid the Application fee ($325) and the Affidavit of Support fee ($120). It took 3 days for the payments to process.
• 2024 May 9 - After the payments completed, the links became available to start entering data and uploading documents. I filled out the application (ds-260) which took about 7 hours to do. It is a lot of information and did a double/triple check for accuracy before completing it.
• 2024 May 9 to 16 - spent all day, every day of this week to collect civil documents for the beneficiary and get sworn translations of each into English. While waiting for translations, we printed the I-864 (affidavit of support) and filled it out.
• 2024 May 17 - Scanned all documents into pdf form and organizing each pdf appropriately into a clean and consistent order. Uploaded all documents and submitted (you can’t submit until all documents are uploaded. Double/triple check everything before submitting.
• 2024 May 22 - Received the “Document Qualified” email and now just waiting for the “Interview letter”

Edited May 31 by MyFirefly
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