Zipline

I chose to email our form letter to the Ombudsman office and I sent a personal letter to the Director. I sent the email out Sunday and received a response this morning. I would like to copy the exact response here but there was a big warning at the bottom of the email response that said I need to get permission to forward the email.
Here is the content of the email:
The CSC processing time has slipped due to competeing agency priorities. CSC is currently shifting resources to address the I-129F. As resources are assigned the CSC expects the processing time for the I-129F to be reduced.
Guys,
Keep up the emails, keep up the letters, keep on writting your senators and congressmen. We are faced with a huge political battle and we are "David" in this battle.. Pressure,,Pressure,,Pressure is the only mechanism that will help us prevail. I beleive CSC is feeling that pressure now.

The majority of approvals occurred before 18th of July 2012, everybody from everywhere was getting fast approvals before that date. Now regardless of what country the fiance is from everyone is waiting 7-8 months.

Feeling the same way you are. Don't worry about the people who are sitting on their hands and not feeling the outrage, because I've got plenty of it to go around and plan on taking lots of action.

There is such a thing as congressional oversight. And pressure from elected officials does have an impact on administrative agencies. I have worked for administrative agencies and know this first hand.
You are incorrect about them complying with law. K1 visa type established under the LIFE act was to avoid family separation. They are not in compliance with this aspect of the law.
On your final point about this only being the beginning: WHO CARE??? The two of you are together. You are living your lives. So, the process is long and annoying... WHO CARES? The problem is this stage where undue separation is being imposed on families of US citizens, arbitrarily. Whether that arbitrariness is law or prioritization or what have you, the separation is outside of K1 filers hands (and CR1 filers, and K3 filers, etc). These statements about this only being the beginning, are straw men.

I've already started a fairly extensive thread on how to deal with the issue via letters to elected representatives (though, of course, that isn't really necessary if you are personal friends with the congressman). I do agree that there is a good chance some conservative media (maybe the NRO or Weekly Standard?) or maybe even regional media outlets and conservative-leaning papers will bite on this story. To that end, I've been doing my best to try and build a factual case that can be disseminated to anyone who will listen to reason, but I know there are still some limitations to my analysis. Most importantly, it is really hard for me to build a model to forecast delays without having the February and March petition figures. Nevertheless, I think the two years of data i do have are sufficient to provide some broad projections for a number of different contingencies. I'm not done working that all out, but I will offer a teaser that I-129F petitioners at the CSC who filed after September, 2012, are definitely looking at 8-12 month processing times under the most likely scenarios. I'll have more on that soon.

I work in Hollywood in film production and my fiance is also in the film industry (currently in London, but joining me in Los Angeles obviously) and I think we'd both be willing to use our skills to help if there was enough interest. I'd be happy to coordinate and all that stuff and he is a director/editor and we have a very nice home editing suite as well as an office one on his end. If there's interest, I'd be willing to pitch in and I'm sure he'd do so as well.

"Whenever they change immigration laws there are unexpected impacts"
Unexpected ? Like going from 5 months to a year to get NOA2 ?
I'm an IT guy and if someone in our team would say "we have an unexpected impact" he can expect to be fired by the end of the day.
Sorry I'm mad.

I say we go gasther in front of CSC one day with signs.

Check this out from their Org chart page:
"The creation of a new Customer Service Directorate. This change reflects our prioritization of customer service and recognizes the significant efforts that will be needed to ensure that we are at the cutting edge of service modeling."
If this wasn't so laughably bogus, it would be insulting. What a pile of #### ####.

Folks, the national average is a "bogus" statistic, taking the average of CSC, VSC, and TSC and NBC, the later 2 hardly processing any I-129F's. These just appeared in the average processing times at the last update, they weren't there before....not sure if it was accidental or done intentionally to "show a higher average" so people would be less likely to complain. Either possibility is pretty lame.

Dear Sir,
I am in need of assistance. I wish to gain your support and action in regards to ongoing issues with our USCIS California Service Center. My fiancée and I made the decision to get married in June 2012 with the intention of her relocating from her home in the UK to live with me in the US. The K1 visa process seemed the most appropriate for us with a 6-9 month time frame that would enable us to plan her relocation and our wedding in time for the summer of 2013. It was my understanding that the family based visas, specifically the K1, were designed to speed up the bureaucratic process involved in order to unite families within a reasonable time frame. I therefore filed a petition for my fiancée in September 2012.
The K1 process involves an I129F petition filed with USCIS by the US citizen, followed by a further processing step at NVC and finally an interview at US Embassy in the beneficiary’s home country.
At that time, the CSC had published processing times for the I129F petition of 5 months, short of the national average of 7 months, with the entire K1 visa process taking an average of 6-9 months. In fact, many of these I129F petitions were being processed within 90 days at the CSC at this time.
We have been waiting patiently for processing for more than 6 months now and have seen an increasingly worrying decline in the rate of petitions processed by the California Service Centre.
In March 2013, the most recent update to I129F processing times, published on the USCIS website, states that the CSC was processing applications up to July 18th 2012 as at Jan 31 2013. This is a date that has not changed from the previous update relating to December 2012. This suggests that the CSC did, in fact, all but cease action on I129F applications during December and January.
Average processing times for I129F petitions, as stated on the USCIS website, state are now showing as 10.2 months (as at Jan 31st) with a CSC average processing time of 6.6 months.
We only have published data through January, 2013, but, based on that data, we know that the completions per receipts of I-129F visas were 33% below their two year average from August, 2012 to January, 2013.
For the last two months of reported data—December and January—completions per receipts were down over 60% from their two year average, the lowest they’ve been on record. This has allowed a substantial backlog of apps to build up very quickly, guaranteeing long delays for anyone who filed since the summer of 2012 and there have likely been no improvements to completions per receipts since January, making the current period of inattention to I-129Fs the longest on record in recent years.
It was my understanding that the family based visas, specifically the K1, were designed to speed up the bureaucratic process involved in order to unite families within a reasonable time frame. I do not consider 10.2 months a reasonable time frame, especially as there is then an additional wait for processing at NVC and then with the Department of State at Consular level.
What concerns me even more is that, at the same time as processing times for K1 visas have increased, the California Service Center have been processing a large number of undocumented immigrants via the Dream Act (DACA) within an average of 100 days, and I am concerned that these cases are being given priority over US citizens who have chosen to follow the rules in the first instance and apply for valid visas for their family members prior to entering the US.
I-129F petitioners are being delayed not just so another application class can be processed—but so they can be processed quickly.
Whilst I appreciate that there may be a political urgency to process DACA cases, it seems grossly unfair that these cases should take priority over petitions where families of US citizens are living apart whilst waiting a decision on their case and who have done everything possible to follow a legal route to immigration.
Furthermore, procedure for following up on individual cases with USCIS involves filing a service request which will not be accepted in the event of the petition having being filed within the national average processing times. However, USCIS is free to change these processing times as it sees fit and the current jump from a national average of 7 months to 10.2 months renders every USC with a petition filed after July with no alternative but to wait and see indefinitely.
USCIS gets to set its own “processing time frame” dates without any apparent oversight or accountability. This means that, if they are running behind in processing a class of applications, they need not worry or respond to customer demands for better service; all they have to do is not update the “processing time frame” date and they will never have to even respond to customer complaints. Customers (i.e., US Citizens who have paid a fee and are relying on this government service), meanwhile, are left to turn to support forums on the internet such as visajourney.com to guess about the true situation.
Therefore, as the USCIS has deliberately shifted resources away from their processing, it has simply stopped updating the I-129F’s processing time frame date, meaning that even customers delayed up to 2-3 months longer than their “target” processing time cannot demand an answer from the USCIS. In fact, the USCIS has not updated their “processing time frame” date for I-129Fs in over three months; it has been July 18, 2012 since December, claiming to the world that it has been processing applications filed on July 18, 2012 for over three straight months without finishing them.
USCIS is manipulating the processing time frame date to avoid accountability. And they are doing so in a way so blatant that it is nothing short of an insult to both their customers and to the elected representatives who should be overseeing their operation.
Hours and hours were spent combing through USCIS data and past practices to demonstrate the current situation.
• Why do they make it so difficult to find out what is going on?
• Why can’t they publish honest time frames so that people can plan their lives accordingly?
No government service should be run in a way where it is actively hiding its inner-workings from the very people who rely upon its services. The USCIS works for us but the only way they get away with it is because they know we can’t fire them. We need our representatives to get serious about firing somebody on our behalf if this continues. We deserve better.
USCIS data indicates that no other category of petition has been affected by the processing of DACA cases and it is my firm belief that this category of petition has been singled out due to the fact that K1 petitions are of a temporary nature and therefore can present no sustainable lobbying power.
I have at all times followed due process and my fiancée has always acted with the best of intentions and has always endeavored to secure the most appropriate visa for the circumstances at the time. She has never overstayed and has never violated the terms of her stays in the US. I do not understand how people such as us who choose to follow legal routes to immigration meet with such hostility, long processing times and high costs when it seems as though others who have entered the US illegally are given priority. As a US citizen I am horrified by the experiences I have encountered, by the unprofessional conduct of the USCIS and DOS, and by the fact that these entities are not held accountable for the way in which they operate and treat individuals. It is unconstitutional at best, and I query how effective it can be when it appears as though illegal entries are rewarded and people following the rules are penalized.
The current situation is patently unfair to I-129F petitioners and borderline outrageous from a political standpoint. Someone has got to start asking the USCIS tough questions about why they have put so much priority on a certain application class and then singled out another class so disproportionately to bear the cost.

I think the letter is well organized and solid. My only suggestions would be to remove any talk about the national average processing time. As someone who has spent more hours than I can count pouring through the data, I can tell you that the national average figure is completely meaningless. As far as I can tell, it is based on the average processing times of the various field offices, which do not accept more than 1 or 2 I-129Fs a year. I don't know why they even publish it on the dashboard, honestly.
Also, you should note that I do not think the average completion time figures for the service centers are likely to be a terribly good or reliable metric either. One problem I have with the USCIS is that they publish means instead of medians, which may allow them to skew their statistics. First, since they expedite some cases where there are hardship and many military members' petitions, the published means cannot truly reflect the average time for an ordinary filer. Second, there is evidence on Igor's list that the USCIS randomly chooses some non-military, non-hardship applications for expedited processing. I believe the second practice is likely actually done to artificially depress the mean processing time, something that cannot be done with a median processing time. It's just another layer of opaqueness on top of all the other murkiness at the USCIS.

I will write it - I have journalism training. Let me get a rough draft built from the letter my fiance sent to his senators and I'll post it here for review.

Wow! This is just ugh I am mad for you K-1 applicants!

You can imagine my surprise when I got the text message at 10:30 am saying we got approved!!! First of all I thought for sure we'd get an RFE because I didn't said any pictures of my passport stamps... Also I called VSC yesterday and they told me to call back in a month because they weren't processing anything beyond September 3!!!!
This is good hope for VSC for my fellow VSC filers/ October filers!!!

Things are just getting worse and worse. We have spoken to our reps, the got excuse CSC isn't processing beyond 18th of July which is a lie. Just sent in another very opinionated letter mentioning all this nonsense. Its beyond ridiculous. We paid for our papers to be processed and instead they took our money and are doing daca classes while we are supposed tons it around quietly like little sheep and do nothing? I don't think so.

I don't care, if they are illegal they have to be sent back asap, I really don't see what the big fuss is about. You are ILLEGAL, you have no rights. I am LEGAL, my affairs take priority over any illegals', brought here as a child or otherwise.

If I were in the position of those at CSC, as circumstances allow, I'd either go CR-1/IR-1 instead. If that didn't work, I'd move out of the US. The thought has crossed my mind more than once. With all of the DACA going on and stuff, it says a lot about our government and their priorities.
I really feel for you guys. I got VSC, but it's not like our situation couldn't take a turn any moment now.

From USCIS - CSC - March 20, 2013 - "Thank you for your inquiry. We are experiencing a longer processing period than what is currently reflected on our national website. Your I-129F, Petition for Alien fiance, is pending review. We recognize your interest in a final determination on your pending petition. The California Service Center is committed to processing this workload, and will be making every effort to finish reviewing your case as soon as available under our resource constraints. If your Form I-129F remains pending 120 days or more from the date of this response, you may call the National Customer Service Center at 1-800-375-5283 to inquire further about the status of your pending petition."
I also went to the USCIS local office and they told me that the new expected timelines they are allowed to give are 1 year from date of application.
I believe this is just padding to get so many of us to stop calling expecting them to do what they say they are going to do in the timeframe in which they said they would do it. Of course they have a right to be upset with us. We are such unreasonable people.

I am sickened by it as well. But regardless of your opinion on the legalization of illegal immigrants, anger against them is misplaced. They aren't screwing this up. Our government is screwing it up. If the USCIS decided to rapidly approve all pending visitor, student, and business visas and devote all their manpower to it and put K-1 and CR-1 on the back burner, it wouldn't be visitors and students and job applicants spitting in your face... it would be the government's fault for gross mismanagement of resources. This is the case here as well. The issue of illegal immigration is a hot button here, since we are all waiting our turn in line and doing things legally. But DACA IS legal. It was their choice to prioritize it for political reasons to our detriment that should have been illegal.

Agree and disagree ... yes they are not cutting in line, because there is no real line. There are sets of work to be done and the CSC is putting the illegals' work far ahead of ours.
Economic sense ... what does it matter? My fiancee will get a job soon after she is allowed to come here. Both her or an illegal can work and contribute to the US economy. And if you want to talk economic impact, consider that so many of us on VJ are sending money abroad via Western Union to help support our fiancees that doesn't see the light of day in the US. One of these days I would love to not be a hermit in my apartment and go out with my loved one and enjoy a nice dinner and a movie, go bowling, go shopping with her (did I really just say that?) ... things that can help our economy.

Feeling the same way you are. Don't worry about the people who are sitting on their hands and not feeling the outrage, because I've got plenty of it to go around and plan on taking lots of action.

The delay is obvious with the AOS transfers as well. This is getting beyond ridiculous. Illegals should have their own processing center, maintained by the fees they pay themselves.

This is beyond unacceptable. US Citizens filed this petition and paid good money for it. There is absolutely no reason that ANY group, business, illegal, whatever should be put ahead of citizens. It should be a USCIS policy regardless of Presidential mandates. I can understand having a set processing time, say 6 months to allow passions to cool down and make sure folks are really ready to get married, however this fickle up and down, bounce you about nonsense should not be acceptable. I know people will reply that this is government and we should just wait but why? If the DMV were to slow down it's processing of drivers licenses, etc do you think that people would put up with it? "Oh sorry, we are behind, currently we are processing pink licenses for dreamers, we'll get to you next month" can you even imagine the outrage? I'm sorry, but from what I have read on these forums it doesn't sound like the USCIS processing takes much longer for than for the DMV processing your license. Considering it is multiple times more expensive.
It's time for the people here who are just like "Whatever just wait" to switch off and for a little outrage to switch on. If a group of illegals who don't have to pay anything to process their application can get set ahead of the legitimate citizens what are we coming to? Google DACA and the first link is a special interest group that wants illegals go come on board because they will be more sympathetic to their cause. This should be outrageous to any citizen regardless of political affiliation. I personally believe immigrants are a huge asset to this nation and agree with many economists who feel that in the not to far future, advanced nations will be competing for immigrants. However the idea that immigrants should essentially be given an open door because they are more likely to vote in a certain why should be a tasteless to Americans as gerrymandering.
Sorry for the rant, but as long as people are willing to sit back and say "that's the way government is" without remembering in which country they live (a place where people can apply pressure and change things) nothing will change. We should talking to various organizations to see if their is a lobbying day in Washington focused on immigration. If not we should set one up. Folks who are being served by the various other service centers should pay attention as well, things might be going OK at VSC now, but what if they get overloaded with a bunch of these DACA applications as well?

If their purpose is to foster enemies of the state, it looks like they will be succeeding.