Nuba

A bit of encouraging news. First approvals from early Sep are being reported.

As things are going with USCIS, we will be lucky to see Feb.

Sorry to report that reported processing time has just changed to 15 months.

Beginning of month update from fellow Nov filer and data dude. First the bad news. According to VJ self-reported data and scans of USCIS site by individual members, over October the delay in processing I129F has slipped to 14.5 months. This is not yet being reported on the USCIS processing time site but don't be surprised to see it shortly unless things pick up.. In Mar USCIS announced their intent to reduce I129F processing time to 6 months over the fiscal year that started in Oct. The final tallies aren't in yet but there are some indications that I129F processing did pick up in Oct. The outstanding cases for months prior to Jul have been whittled down and Jul doesn't have all that far to go. There are some signs that the abnormally high rate of RFEs we saw over the summer is abating. These trends, if accurate, would free more resources to work on the current processing month, which is August. And indeed we did see a surge in late Aug cases processed in the last week or so. I've been fooled before but I am hoping to see the delay stop increasing in the next few weeks. TL;DR: Next key indicator is when they start processing Sep which I don't expect before mid Nov but hope springs eternal.

Here is the official announcement from USCIS https://www.uscis.gov/venezuela At this link under The Process : Note: The beneficiary must have a valid, unexpired passport. Certified extensions of passport validity serve to meet this requirement. If a beneficiary's passport validity has been extended, the expiration date of the extension should be reflected as the passport expiration date. CBP will not authorize travel if the beneficiary's passport or extension is expired.

As i reported above the data continue to show the posted date of 14 months continues to slip closer to 14.5 . One good trend we are seeing in recent scan data is the percentage of RFEs has dropped significantly from the historically atypical high numbers of the summer. This will mean less revisiting of petitions and thus more time for new ones. At this point to bring that number down in the next year USCIS will need to assign a lot more adjudicators to I129F or the existing ones will need to become a lot more more efficient. This is true even if there were no new I129F petitions after today given the current backlog

Thanks for the update. Another good Tu after a low Mon. Seems Tu has replaced Mon as the big day of the week. One encouraging thing is the percentage of RFEs has dropped considerably from the spikes in the summer. Maybe the new trainees are getting a little less trigger happy. 😀

I am a Nov 2021 filer who is also a data dude. When I filed, the estimate was 6-8 months so I share your pain. I have been monitoring both internally reported VJ data and data independently scanned from the USCIS site since the announcement in Mar. You are right. The processing time has continued to slip. In fact, current data show that the actual processing delay is just shy of 14.5 months. There has been a gradual trend up in the number of weekly cases processed but not enough to reverse the slide. The hope some of us had was that after fiscal year end, resources might be shifted from visas that had yearly quotas to K1 and CR1 starting Oct 1 . It is still too early to notice a definitive shift but there have been a couple of days with a large number of processed cases reported; these might be a reporting anomaly since the day before was unusually low. They seem to be closing outstanding cases from previous months much faster than before. It is also encouraging that they started processing Aug well before Jul untouched cases had approached 500 which seemed to be the trigger previously for moving to next month. Interesting that they are processing across many data ranges in Aug, which would indicate they have distributed the work across many adjudicators in parallel. Cases are definitely not processed in strict numerical order as some folks seem to think is or should be the case. Don't know if this gives you hope but perhaps it provides a little transparency which USCUS seems to abhor. Shifting to your initial topic, my fiancé and I are also a same sex couple. We actually could get married in his home country but chose to do it in Hawaii (we're romantic). There is one option that I learned about after I filed for K1: the Utah online marriage. During the pandemic Utah and a few other states permitted on line marriages. Of these, Utah continues to offer the service and since same sex marriage is recognized at the federal level, Utah support it in their online marriages. (Yes Utah!). You and your partner can each be in any location, inside or outside the US and even in separate countries. This is a legitimate marriage (marriage by proxy...I asked my lawyer) recognized by many governmental agencies, including the IRS so mind your taxes. The one catch is that for it to be recognized by USCIS you and your fiancé must meet once AFTER the wedding to consummate it, as opposed to meeting once BEFORE applying for the K1. Consummate in this context just means any in-person meeting, not in the biblical sense (It has been asked...on-line sex doesn't count for this purpose). If our K1 visa is denied for any reason, we will do this and immediately apply for CR1 since by then we will have been together more than 10 times.

I am a Nov 21 K1 filer, Thanks for the concise summary.

You can see VJ self reported stats for EAD here https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/eadstats.php?cfl= And AOS stats here https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/aosstats.php?cfl=

I'd like to think so too. But since it is such an outlier, I suspect it represents many from Tu that were entered on Wed. In any case, it was nice to see.

Not quite. From https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/AnnualReports/FY2021AnnualReport/FY21_ TableXVB.pdf 2017. 2018. 2019. 2020. 2021 K3 Certain spouse of U.S. citizen 15 6 5 2 2

True but this is tempered by the Tu just before. If you average the two days it is good but not so spectacular. Hope springs eternal...

Dang. As a Nov filer i got excited that a Sep was approved. 😁

I don't claim to be an expert although this is my second time through the K1 process (long story). Yes, the I-134 is completed after the NOA2 and will be included in the packet you submit to the embassy for your interview. There is an excellent guide to the K-1 process here on VJ that covers this and many other points. The associated K1 flowchart is also very clear. I encourage you to read through them to know what's coming when we finally get past NOA2. Hope this helps.