US Immigration from Belarus

Hi everyone,

I filed I130s for my wife and my adopted daughter back in June 2021. I've filed an expedite request on January 26th of this year.
After about a month and a half, on March 13th I got an official response from the DHS Potomac office in my email. Listing all the case information, at the end of the letter it said the following:

Quote

We are unable to expedite your case at this time as our service records indicate that we recently approved your Form I-130 and mailed an approval notice to the address of record.

And below information that I should be checking my case status online, etc.

It is now April 11th, the case status online did not change for my wife's nor my daughter's cases from Actively Reviewed.

I have called USCIS. I was told by the agent that the case doesn't appear as approved in their records, however they do see the official response sent by the DHS quoted above.

The agent told me that neither he nor Tier 2 agents have such detailed information as what DHS agents who reviewed the case have access to and that I should basically continue to wait.

This is unnerving as I have no idea as to what's actually going on with the cases. I have received no official approval notice neither online nor physically. The cases are basically stuck in limbo?

As it stands now, I have no way to find out the status of the case nor expedite it as it's "approved" yet there's no way to confirm this and no way to get in contact with someone who can?

Looks like the only option at this point is contacting the ombudsman, but I'm not sure how effective this actually is.

Has anyone ever gotten a letter like this and how long it actually takes to get an approval notice currently?

Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Wanted to get thoughts from people who might have experience with either routes here as our situation is a bit of a mess. I'm trying to evaluate which route is the best option for us between trying to expedite an AOS for accompanied OCONUS orders or if we would be better to get married, complete the military administrative bases then wait until I'm OCONUS and DCF.

Her K1 visa was finally approved after 5 months in AP. With needing to recomplete some expired requirements for the visa and tie up loose ends at home she likely would be able to make it to the US in June. Our options once she gets here and get married are the following (from what I've gathered):

1) Apply for AOS and request an expedite then hope we have an I-130 approval before it's too late to get SOFA status prior to moving OCONUS. I'm seeing wait times on AOS ranging 5 months to 1.5 years so it really feels like a crapshoot. I also am uncertain how long her background checks would take since she was already flagged for AP by the consulate, or if the existing ones would expedite it as they have already completed very thorough reviews at this point. Ultimately as long as the I-130 approval goes through she can get her SOFA status though and we can request any additional processing to be sent to the consulate from my understanding.

2) Spend the 90 days together in the US then she could go home or on an extended vacation until I move to Germany. I've already confirmed with the consulate that I can file as soon as I enter the country and other members here are seeing less than 2 week approval times on the I-130 then near instant issuance of the SOFA certificates. She has a valid visa for where I will be going so she could join me as soon as I moved as well for up to 90 days, then stay on the SOFA status. Obviously the key to this is that absolutely nothing for AOS can be done prior to moving OCONUS otherwise we lose the DCF eligibility.

My gut here is telling me holding off the AOS then using DCF as soon as I'm OCONUS is the best route, but at the cost of another couple months apart once the 90 days on her K1 expires. But outweighs the risk of her AOS getting bogged down and us being apart for anywhere from months to over a year as we won't be able to refile as soon as something is entered stateside.

I'm hoping some folks here might have some additional experiences they can share or further input incase I'm missing something.

Just trying to make sure I'm on the right scheduler, after seeing every other embassy having very immediate interview times. I recognize of course everything going on in Warsaw right now, but for those who can still sign up for interviews or have access to TravelDocs, is it really true that the next K1 appointment (besides the weird one that just opened next week) is late July?

Hi all, so I've been messaging this question around but remain very confused and was hoping to get some help in the main forum. So after calling for my case number yesterday, I logged into USATravelDocs for Poland and went to schedule the interview; I had not made a DS-160 for the K1 yet, though a B2 DS-160 was begun almost a year ago that was since abandoned. To my surprise, I was only asked to select immigrant or non-immigrant, the particular visa type, and then complete the 'personal information' for the beneficiary (which only asked for Priority Date and nothing else). After doing this, I was asked to pay the $235 MRV fee and it immediately took me to the scheduler. I selected the earliest date and bam, complete.

Upon pulling up the confirmation page later, however, I noted that the B2 DS-160 was listed - despite never having selected it anywhere. So, currently, my fiancee has an interview scheduled with Warsaw for a K1 but with the wrong DS-160 listed. We also were never asked, neither on the DS-160 nor on the USATravelDocs site, for the case number or invoice number. Only our USCIS number was asked on the DS-160 we are currently filling out for the K1.

My questions are as follows:

(1) I noted that it's apparently a problem with people that have existing B2 applications, that the K1 appointment will wrongly select the old DS-160 on file. Is there a way to change this? Can I call TravelDocs and have them manually update it to the correct one, when it's complete? Will this require me cancelling my interview slot (and, if yes, would I be able to just re-select it immediately after)?

(2) Are the case number/invoice number referenced at all on the DS-160 or on TravelDocs? I can find no place to put them. This is very, very strange to me, as all of these steps could've been done well in advance of even having an approval (perhaps this step is embassy-specific?). In other words, for Warsaw, I did not need to call NVC to get to the stage I'm at now.

(3) As a general question, how will Warsaw know to request my case if nothing I've entered has the case number in it? Do they just request all pending visa cases from NVC, and on the date of the interview they somehow match the passport number to the petition and pull it up? My main concern is that there's absolutely nothing linking our current appointment and our particular K1 case file at NVC, apart from the passport number and the fact I selected a K1 interview.

Thank you sincerely in advance, from someone incredibly stressed and confused.

Hi! Just curious about this, as I'm not sure how quickly this can be done (or if this is as simple as just giving someone a call, as I think it is). Backstory is that my fiancee has a USATravelDocs account registered to Romania, because way back when Embassy Bucharest said third-country nationals could renew their tourist visas there (turned out to be a miscommunication between USATravelDocs and the embassy, only resolved after I got in touch with the embassy itself). In any case, because her interview will soon be in Warsaw, I will need to transfer the account over to Poland. I tried creating a new one with the same email out of curiosity and got a bunch of error messages, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to transfer the previous one.

Do I just call the USATravelDocs number for Romania (or preferably, Poland) and ask them to move it over? Has anyone had experience with this, is it a pretty quick process? Thank you in advance!