US Immigration from Russia

Hello all,

The CEAC status of my soon to be ex-husband changed to "REFUSED" after months of "READY". He never had an interview as I withdrew it before we ever got an interview date. I withdrew the application back in May but did not receive confirmation until July, then the status did not move until now.

Will it be sent back to USCIS to expire? Just curious how that will work.

Seeking advise from experienced VJ members.

We are getting close to our K1 visa interview appointment and I need clarification about the affidavit of support papers. As a student, I don t have any income right now but I m using my father to co-sponsor my fianc . He makes enough to meet the poverty guidelines and all other requirements. However, I recently came across a thing called a substitute sponsor (different from co-sponsor). Does my father need to become a substitute sponsor and fill I-864 form if I don t have any income? I know that I-864 is supposed to be filled for AOS but this substitute sponsor thing got me confused.

I ve previously assumed that I need to fill two I-134 forms from myself, even though I don t have any income, and my father, along with his tax returns.

Thanks in advance.

My Russian girlfriend and I will likely get engaged soon, followed by marriage. Everything else being the same, such as ties to her home country, etc., will a B2 applicant that is married or engaged to a US citizen be more or less likely to be approved for a B2 tourist visa, than if she wasn't engaged or married?

Hello, I received my green card in august 2020 (marriage based, but we are married for a long time now, so the green card was for 10 years). I read somewhere that I can apply for citizenship 90 days before my 3rd year anniversary for green card, so by my calculation it s in May 2023. Are there any people who share my timeline? Let s keep in touch

I see this come up both here at VJ and on other websites, where people quote the published 'Case Processing Time' for a certain SC on USCIS website while thinking that the # of months is how long it will take for their case to get processed. I don't know if mods think this is worth a sticky or not, but I'd at least like to make sure my understanding is correct and possibly help out other people in correctly interpret this information. I've tried to summarize the info provided here, which is a little hard to follow: https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/more-info

The starting point is to understand how the USCIS currently (as of this post - Sept 2022) calculates the time published on their page for I-130 applications. Most importantly, it is not some sort of "average of how long it takes cases to process". Nor is it the "processing time" calculation used for I-129F forms, which is the number of months it took for 80% of cases to be processed from their receipt date, averaged over the last 6 months. In fact, the I-130 form is one of a handful that still uses something called "Cycle time" (which is used for the dates of Form I 129, Form I 129CW, Form I 130, Form I 212, Form I 360, Form I 600, Form I 600A, Form I 601, Form I 730, Form I 800, Form I 800A, and Form N 565 - but notice not the Form I-129F.) Currently, the "cycle time" is defined as "how many months' worth of cases are awaiting a decision for a particular form." Now a rhetorical question: Why doesn't this approach make sense as a metric for us to understand I-130 cases? This is because (it seems like) the new online format for I-130 filing is 'evenly' distributing cases between service centers, even though those SC's don't process the same number of I-130's each month.

Here are some exaggerated, made up numbers on what I mean, based on some rough numbers from the USCIS quarterly statistics (primarily the fact that Texas/Nebraska/Potomac historically completed a vast majority of I-130 cases, while Vermont was one of the smaller offices...)

If all SC's were assigned as many cases as they are processing in equal proportions, then the 'cycle time' measurement would make sense:

• Texas SC: 20k cases pending, completed 5k cases in the previous month -> 20k/5k = 4 months 'cycle time'
• Vermont SC: 4k cases pending, completed 1k cases in previous month -> 4k/1k = 4 months 'cycle time'

But, due to the new system of assigning cases "equally", what is happening is more like the following:

• Texas SC: 12k cases pending, completed 5k cases in previous month -> 2.25mo 'cycle time'
• Vermont SC: 12k cases pending, completed 1k cases in previous month -> 12mo 'cycle time'

This trend seems to be changing, to where each SC is actually reviewing the same number of cases each quarter, but since the cycle time has some delay to it, those numbers won't match up well to what people see "in real life" - for example, right now, it seems like Vermont (16mo cycle time) is processing October cases from 2021, while California (10.5mo cycle time) is still at late August/September.