Ratty and C

Congratulations to all the approved December filers, so great to see most are approved now Hang in there everyone else, your turn will be soon. I wonder how many of the Dec filers now are just people who didn't update their profiles?

She arrives in 15 hours - on the plane now! OMG how can i sleep tonight?

Just to wrap up this thread and update everyone, tonight i called the embassy and they are ready to issue our visa, we just need to wait for the passport now. Contacting my congressman really seems like it worked! Good job Duncan Hunter, Holly, Dixie and team.
Good luck to all and thank you so much for all the advice, concern and good wishes!

Thanks for the reply, i was very respectful when contacting the ex, but he was adamant about not helping.
Yeah, i know what you're saying about keeping an open mind about him but there's more i know about him than i'm posting here, and not information from her but from news articles. He's bad news. I have been extremely careful not to antagonize him 'cos as you say maybe we need him.

So, from what i read elsewhere this has happened to other people. The process is something like this...
1. The first application is made,
2. The couple breaks up, the fiancee does not turn up for the interview
3. The petitioner does not withdraw the application.
4. Time passes,
5. The 2nd petitioner applies for the original beneficiary,
6. The application is approved by USCIS, sent to the embassy
7. The Embassy denies the application stating 221(g)+Other "Multiple petitions",
8. The embassy returns the application to the USCIS district director that approved the most recent petition
9. The original petition is reevaluated and denied
10. The new petition is approved and sent back to the embassy.
However, it's not clear to me yet that stages 9-10 always take place, i've read conflicting reports about CSC just sitting on the applications when they are returned and allowing them to expire, while VSC does do steps 9 and 10.
The embassy does not seem to make the judgement as to whether the original application is expired, they leave that to USCIS, so the 4 month expiration window mentioned by various people to show she has multiple applications ongoing at the same time is not true.
I honestly believe what she has told me, she was up front about that before we even talked about visas but i just never pushed for enough detail due to the age of that relationship. Even if i had more details, i would still have assumed that the original petition had expired and was therefore no hinderance. Really, i'd ask people to refrain from further judgement as to her intentions because my intention here is to find useful information which can also hopefully help other people avoid the same situation in future. I would not wish the last 22 hours on anyone, and i don't want to spend my time defending my beloved against any accusation or insinuation that she is scamming or misrepresenting. If you don't know her you don't know just how special she is, incredibly smart, kind, loving, hard working, quirky, funny and wow she's so beautiful. I truly believe there is not a person on this planet better suited to me than she is. There have been so many occasions where she's been presented with a choice where she could easily have taken the easy option but every time she goes for what's best for both of us, even at her own expense. I could go on and on, but please believe me when i say that my fiancee is 100% legit and trustworthy, and she is not deserving of any doubt from people who don't even know her. I know many simply have my best interests at heart, but don't worry for me about that, just concentrate on useful advice which can also help others to learn from our experience.
Thanks to all for your responses - i just saw there's 3 more, i'll post this then read them.

She did not attend the old application interview.
They did not deny the previous petition, it was basically abandoned.
I don't know why he didn't need to withdraw his petition, that is the thing that immediately confused her. Maybe she is wrong about his wife having immigrated from the Philippines directly, maybe she was in the US already, she doesn't think so but i'll ask her to clarify.
I understand what you're saying and i am aware and very cautious of being scammed or something but i assure you that is not what's happening. I've written to the embassy, we'll see if they reply with any sensible information. I'll get to the bottom of it one way or another.

Okay, thanks for the clarification. I agree, i need to know what happened exactly, i thought i knew enough before and should have probed more deeply but it was so long ago and really didn't seem relevant, but for sure we will be talking about it in depth once she is at home and can skype properly, which is just a few hours from now. She has been very honest but i really should have asked more questions, just neither of us thought of it as a problem. How wrong we were.
It is absolutely definitely not another case within the last 4 months or even any time since we filed, we have been so close, i have spent so much time with her, met her family, friends, can verify her employment etc. So anyway, hopefully the embassy reply (7+ business day for replies they say) will clarify the situation.
Yes, i'm hoping now that reapplication won't be necessary, but there's just not enough information for us to know that yet.
Thanks for the reply, i appreciate the effort you and the other posters have put in to help us. Visa Journey is such a great website and community, we would be lost without it.

She did not attend the old application interview.
They did not deny the previous petition, it was basically abandoned.
I don't know why he didn't need to withdraw his petition, that is the thing that immediately confused her. Maybe she is wrong about his wife having immigrated from the Philippines directly, maybe she was in the US already, she doesn't think so but i'll ask her to clarify.
I understand what you're saying and i am aware and very cautious of being scammed or something but i assure you that is not what's happening. I've written to the embassy, we'll see if they reply with any sensible information. I'll get to the bottom of it one way or another.

You could not be more wrong, and there's no way you have enough information from what i posted that you could determine that.

I called at 4am PST (dear lord!) and got through in seconds.

Congratulations!

Congrats !!!

Congrats!
I'm a December filer too...fingers crossed...waiting on God's perfect time...

me too im dec filer huuuuuuuuu noa2 plsss

They are really approving all over the place...
Congrats

WOOT getting close to january! almost made it as a dec filer but thts fine

congrats! are u a csc or vsc?

Actually looking at the cases near mine (Dec) from the USCIS site there's 17 Fiancee cases, 5 approvals, 5 initial review and 7 RFE's. Hardly a big enough sample but I think what you're seeing may be that not everyone files knowing about VisaJourneys, and the more time goes on the more people find it. Those that knew about the site before they filed were more likely to have included all the correct information. This results December filers on Visa Journeys being the people who more likely had advice from VisaJourneys, whereas people from longer ago that filed in July are more a mixture of people who were already on VisaJourneys but also people that found it in the more recent months. This would explain the discrepancy between the low number of RFE's for December filers on VisaJourneys and the high number on the USCIS site for December filers.
So what you're seeing is likely not a difference between the number of people getting RFE's, it's a difference in the number of people that have found VisaJourneys so far - and there will probably be more December filers find the site in the next few months. For sure since i registered there have been hundreds of new users from previous months (July-Nov) register with VisaJourney 'cos my number in the list keeps going up, not down, until this past week or so.
Anyhow that's just my theory about the discrepancy.

Actually looking at the cases near mine (Dec) from the USCIS site there's 17 Fiancee cases, 5 approvals, 5 initial review and 7 RFE's. Hardly a big enough sample but I think what you're seeing may be that not everyone files knowing about VisaJourneys, and the more time goes on the more people find it. Those that knew about the site before they filed were more likely to have included all the correct information. This results December filers on Visa Journeys being the people who more likely had advice from VisaJourneys, whereas people from longer ago that filed in July are more a mixture of people who were already on VisaJourneys but also people that found it in the more recent months. This would explain the discrepancy between the low number of RFE's for December filers on VisaJourneys and the high number on the USCIS site for December filers.
So what you're seeing is likely not a difference between the number of people getting RFE's, it's a difference in the number of people that have found VisaJourneys so far - and there will probably be more December filers find the site in the next few months. For sure since i registered there have been hundreds of new users from previous months (July-Nov) register with VisaJourney 'cos my number in the list keeps going up, not down, until this past week or so.
Anyhow that's just my theory about the discrepancy.

PROPOSE First. Then file.