Reddit user posted 1 year visa timeline

[Buddy Lee 7]

not sure if this is against the rules but found this post the other day. user had submitted june of 2024 and completed their visa in a year using the k3 method. May not be valid any longer but thought i'd share my finding to the community. 

 

 

[appleblossom 5,019]

8 minutes ago, Buddy Lee said:

not sure if this is against the rules but found this post the other day. user had submitted june of 2024 and completed their visa in a year using the k3 method. May not be valid any longer but thought i'd share my finding to the community. 

 

Unusual but not unheard of. There are people on the forum who've had their I-130's adjudicated in just a few months, but it's rare - and doesn't seem to have any correlation to a K-3 app being filed. 

 

It is also very consulate dependent, some people will still have to wait over 2 years just for an interview date, but Ho Chi Minh City is one of the quickest consulates so that will have been a factor too.

 

I still don't understand why on earth spousal apps can't have priority processing as an option just like employment based do. It's always seemed crazy to me that somebody reuniting with a spouse may have to wait so much longer than somebody applying under an EB category! 

Edited Thursday at 09:15 PM by appleblossom

[S2N 495]

2 hours ago, appleblossom said:

Unusual but not unheard of. There are people on the forum who've had their I-130's adjudicated in just a few months, but it's rare - and doesn't seem to have any correlation to a K-3 app being filed. 

This is a Texas I-130. It’s the only service center I’ve seen where there’s a trend of approving I-130s faster than average if you file for a K-3 as well.

 

They’re the ones who process the I-129Fs for K-3. I’ve said this before, but I can totally see local leadership having an unofficial policy of processing easy I-130s already assigned to them if a K-3 is applied for since it’d let them get rid of two petitions and bump their numbers.

 

I’ve yet to see any evidence the K-3 works for I-130s initially assigned elsewhere.

 

[Crazy Cat 45,445]

11 hours ago, S2N said:

I’ve yet to see any evidence the K-3 works for I-130s initially assigned elsewhere.

For a while, Nebraska was THE service center which would quickly close an I-129F, and immediately approve an I-130.  That was a few years ago.  Some of us thought it was rogue adjudicator.   Personally, I haven't seen another trend.  Thanks for the info about TSC.

[S2N 495]

52 minutes ago, Crazy Cat said:

For a while, Nebraska was THE service center which would quickly close an I-129F, and immediately approve an I-130.  That was a few years ago.  Some of us thought it was rogue adjudicator.   Personally, I haven't seen another trend.  Thanks for the info about TSC.

Yeah, if you look at the crazy fast approvals on Reddit or Discord these days they’re virtually all originally at TSC.

Similar to the theory of a rogue adjudicator, I think there’s probably a supervisor somewhere trying to pad the numbers and directing I-130s to ISOs when an I-129F comes in. ISOs don’t have any say on what cases go into their queue, so it’d have to be a supervisor routing it. Someone with performance metrics tied to closing cases would have a motivation to speed something up if it’s a 2-for-1, which would explain why you see a lot of Texas ones.

 

Of course, that’s all speculation but everything regarding K-3 is speculation and I think it’s a decent explanation for I-130s in TSC taking 3-6 months to get approved with K-3.

Edited yesterday at 12:22 PM by S2N

[OldUser 10,593]

I mean, the other day I saw somebody's I-751 approved within 1 months of submitting. A regular user, not in military etc. Majority of folks will wait for few years. What helped the user get approved this fast? Was it the moon phase? That's how I feel about I-129F speeding up I-130.

[S2N 495]

1 hour ago, OldUser said:

I mean, the other day I saw somebody's I-751 approved within 1 months of submitting. A regular user, not in military etc. Majority of folks will wait for few years. What helped the user get approved this fast? Was it the moon phase? That's how I feel about I-129F speeding up I-130.

I generally agree with your point of view on it, but I think there’s enough early approvals coming out of TSC to say it might be useful if your I-130 is already sitting there. Doesn’t hurt and anecdotal evidence it could be helpful along with a rational explanation as to why that SC would let people “skip ahead.”

 

Another Reddit case where you got a 4 month approval from TSC. Another 6 month K-3 from TSC. Didn’t feel like digging for more but there’s enough anecdotal evidence for me to feel comfortable calling it a trend.

 

For all the others I agree with you that it’s not worth the time filling it out. Even if it’s free.

Edited 20 hours ago by S2N

[OldUser 10,593]

~ Thread moved to K-3 progress subforum as it better fits the discussion ~

[JD2 185]

4 hours ago, OldUser said:

I mean, the other day I saw somebody's I-751 approved within 1 months of submitting. A regular user, not in military etc. Majority of folks will wait for few years. What helped the user get approved this fast? Was it the moon phase? That's how I feel about I-129F speeding up I-130.

I filed a I-129F for a K-3 for my spouse.  Our I-130 was approved in 2 months and our CR-1 was in hand within a year (filed I-130 in Jan got visa in Dec.).  This was in 2021 in the middle of covid.  In India.  My cousins who married before Covid waited 1.5 years for their wives.  My brother had similar results as me and he filed a month after me (although his wife from UK so not as impressive).  Now, the interesting part IMO is our I-751s were freakishly fast too.  So was it the K-3? or is it just something else about certain cases like maybe all the background check items are coincidentally completely clear so the officers are able to quickly approve?

[TBoneTX 48,074]

Some recently received petitions might be pulled off the tops of stacks so that new USCIS personnel can be trained.

[OldUser 10,593]

1 hour ago, TBoneTX said:

Some recently received petitions might be pulled off the tops of stacks so that new USCIS personnel can be trained.

That's an interesting theory

[S2N 495]

In theory even the paper petitions now are digitized and they get routed to an ISO’s computer when it’s their turn. A few line ISOs have done AMAs about it or posted comments. Even for trainings I’d assume most of them would be semi-automated by PD.

 

My overall theory for most of any type of form that gets approved significantly faster than normal is that there’s a mistake or some other flag/error that requires manual intervention in the computer. For a lot of systems to fix data entry errors, database artifacts, etc. you’d actually need to look at the underlying support. At that point if an ISOs already reviewed it, they might as well adjudicate. I know in my work there’s a software that doesn’t work if there’s an extra comma somewhere in the CSV file. If my staff need my assistance figuring out how to fix it, I usually just go ahead and review the entire output when fixed without waiting for them to do it.

 

In short, my theory is the super quick forms are probably supervisory staff fixing data entry errors or the like that fail automated validations.

Edited 7 hours ago by S2N