Allanah and Chris

We ran into troubles with this when buying our home in January on the expired GC + extension letter. It was unbelievably frustrating. They asked ridiculous questions like, "well how can you work if your green card is expired?" ...because our immigration system makes about as much sense as putting teeth in biscuits (sure, teeth helps you eat food...but you would not put teeth in your food!).
 
The good news: you CAN and should get a loan with the appropriately favorable terms, regardless of your spouse's immigration status. We did, it just took some time.
 
My advice:
Educate them on the process. Americans have gone beyond idiotic about immigration and especially the I-751 process. Even those whose jobs require them to be educated on the process have nary a clue. You will hear things like, "you are not a permanent resident if your green card can expire". Or, "we need to see her work authorization and green card." Sigh.
  Contact your congresscritter for backup. The Fair Housing Act makes it roughly illegal for a lender to discriminate against your spouse due to their immigration status. The general counsel for my congressman was willing to go to the CFPB on our behalf if the lender did not get their act together. I mentioned this on the phone and the underwriter was very receptive to "learning" about the immigration process.
  Provide for them the documentation you would normally provide at the border (i.e. your GC/ext letter/I-551 stamp, your case number, etc). Provide an explanation for this documentation, as you probably normally have to because nobody has a clue.
  At some point they are going to ask, "well when will you know?" or "when is your interview?" ...give them a look, but try to avoid saying, "how about you call the USCIS and see where that gets you," and try to hold back and not to let on you are incredibly frustrated by their lack of understanding of simple things like, "queues". We provided the USCIS Ombudsperson's 2016 report and highlighted their findings on the I-751 massive delays (here is an excerpt from our letter to the underwriter):
  The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Annual Report 2016 covered this awkward position we've been placed in (pp. 78):

We ran into troubles with this when buying our home in January on the expired GC + extension letter. It was unbelievably frustrating. They asked ridiculous questions like, "well how can you work if your green card is expired?" ...because our immigration system makes about as much sense as putting teeth in biscuits (sure, teeth helps you eat food...but you would not put teeth in your food!).
 
The good news: you CAN and should get a loan with the appropriately favorable terms, regardless of your spouse's immigration status. We did, it just took some time.
 
My advice:
Educate them on the process. Americans have gone beyond idiotic about immigration and especially the I-751 process. Even those whose jobs require them to be educated on the process have nary a clue. You will hear things like, "you are not a permanent resident if your green card can expire". Or, "we need to see her work authorization and green card." Sigh.
  Contact your congresscritter for backup. The Fair Housing Act makes it roughly illegal for a lender to discriminate against your spouse due to their immigration status. The general counsel for my congressman was willing to go to the CFPB on our behalf if the lender did not get their act together. I mentioned this on the phone and the underwriter was very receptive to "learning" about the immigration process.
  Provide for them the documentation you would normally provide at the border (i.e. your GC/ext letter/I-551 stamp, your case number, etc). Provide an explanation for this documentation, as you probably normally have to because nobody has a clue.
  At some point they are going to ask, "well when will you know?" or "when is your interview?" ...give them a look, but try to avoid saying, "how about you call the USCIS and see where that gets you," and try to hold back and not to let on you are incredibly frustrated by their lack of understanding of simple things like, "queues". We provided the USCIS Ombudsperson's 2016 report and highlighted their findings on the I-751 massive delays (here is an excerpt from our letter to the underwriter):
  The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Annual Report 2016 covered this awkward position we've been placed in (pp. 78):

We ran into troubles with this when buying our home in January on the expired GC + extension letter. It was unbelievably frustrating. They asked ridiculous questions like, "well how can you work if your green card is expired?" ...because our immigration system makes about as much sense as putting teeth in biscuits (sure, teeth helps you eat food...but you would not put teeth in your food!).
 
The good news: you CAN and should get a loan with the appropriately favorable terms, regardless of your spouse's immigration status. We did, it just took some time.
 
My advice:
Educate them on the process. Americans have gone beyond idiotic about immigration and especially the I-751 process. Even those whose jobs require them to be educated on the process have nary a clue. You will hear things like, "you are not a permanent resident if your green card can expire". Or, "we need to see her work authorization and green card." Sigh.
  Contact your congresscritter for backup. The Fair Housing Act makes it roughly illegal for a lender to discriminate against your spouse due to their immigration status. The general counsel for my congressman was willing to go to the CFPB on our behalf if the lender did not get their act together. I mentioned this on the phone and the underwriter was very receptive to "learning" about the immigration process.
  Provide for them the documentation you would normally provide at the border (i.e. your GC/ext letter/I-551 stamp, your case number, etc). Provide an explanation for this documentation, as you probably normally have to because nobody has a clue.
  At some point they are going to ask, "well when will you know?" or "when is your interview?" ...give them a look, but try to avoid saying, "how about you call the USCIS and see where that gets you," and try to hold back and not to let on you are incredibly frustrated by their lack of understanding of simple things like, "queues". We provided the USCIS Ombudsperson's 2016 report and highlighted their findings on the I-751 massive delays (here is an excerpt from our letter to the underwriter):
  The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Annual Report 2016 covered this awkward position we've been placed in (pp. 78):

We ran into troubles with this when buying our home in January on the expired GC + extension letter. It was unbelievably frustrating. They asked ridiculous questions like, "well how can you work if your green card is expired?" ...because our immigration system makes about as much sense as putting teeth in biscuits (sure, teeth helps you eat food...but you would not put teeth in your food!).
 
The good news: you CAN and should get a loan with the appropriately favorable terms, regardless of your spouse's immigration status. We did, it just took some time.
 
My advice:
Educate them on the process. Americans have gone beyond idiotic about immigration and especially the I-751 process. Even those whose jobs require them to be educated on the process have nary a clue. You will hear things like, "you are not a permanent resident if your green card can expire". Or, "we need to see her work authorization and green card." Sigh.
  Contact your congresscritter for backup. The Fair Housing Act makes it roughly illegal for a lender to discriminate against your spouse due to their immigration status. The general counsel for my congressman was willing to go to the CFPB on our behalf if the lender did not get their act together. I mentioned this on the phone and the underwriter was very receptive to "learning" about the immigration process.
  Provide for them the documentation you would normally provide at the border (i.e. your GC/ext letter/I-551 stamp, your case number, etc). Provide an explanation for this documentation, as you probably normally have to because nobody has a clue.
  At some point they are going to ask, "well when will you know?" or "when is your interview?" ...give them a look, but try to avoid saying, "how about you call the USCIS and see where that gets you," and try to hold back and not to let on you are incredibly frustrated by their lack of understanding of simple things like, "queues". We provided the USCIS Ombudsperson's 2016 report and highlighted their findings on the I-751 massive delays (here is an excerpt from our letter to the underwriter):
  The Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman Annual Report 2016 covered this awkward position we've been placed in (pp. 78):

Good news: a traffic officer could care less about your UK driver's license being in use longer than 90 days. Keep driving on it until you can get your IL license figured out.
Some tips to avoid traffic officers (they really are nice guys and gals):
1. Don't drive recklessly
2. Don't drive recklessly
3. Be polite
4. Don't drive recklessly
5. Don't make excuses
So find another DMV office to try at, and don't drive recklessly in the meantime. You'll be fine.

Provided the system doesn't have a hiccup, you can trust the timeline. During our K-1 process there was a hiccup (VSC->TSC transfer) and we'll be 264 days from NOA1 to Interview. Many people applied far after us and are interviewing far before we are.
It is a total ####### shoot :-)
So, my advice would be to take a low ball of 6 months and a high ball of 12 months from NOA1 to Interview and plan accordingly.

Case Transfers
Current as of July 2013.

Many posts are being made about transfers, and what these emails/notifications mean.
(I dropped a post in the K1 Forum but it has to do with Service Centers, so I'll post one here too)

If you filed a K-1 petition received a notice that looked like one of the following, your case has been transferred to another Service Center.... NOT your local office. Local offices do not process I-129F petitions. The method of transfers applies to all case types, however whether it was transferred to your local office depends on your case type. You should receive an Notice Of Action Transfer (NoA-T) in the mail telling you where your file was transferred within two weeks of the electronic notification or case update on the USCIS website.
This transfer is usually a good thing. A transfer will occur when a Service Center is backlogged and cannot keep up with the influx of petitions, so they transfer the backlogged cases to another service center so those people can be processed in a timely manner. If you were told you have to wait another 180 days -- this is incorrect. Many Tier 1 Immigration Officers (the first people you talk to when you call the customer service number) are given a script to read from, which more often than not contains misinformation. They do not have access to any information that you, yourself cannot find online by either checking your case status or what is available on the USCIS website. Your case will be processed by receipt date, at the speed of the adjudicator processing it, and influenced by the complexity of the case.
In many cases there will be three notifications when a case is transferred.


The first notification will contain something like this:

This means that USCIS has sent your electronic file to the other office. Every time your file is handled by someone they have to scan it (to track where it is and who last handled it so they know who is responsible if anything come back with an issue), when they scan it if there are updates regarding your case (transfer, RFE, typographical error, inquiry, etc) there will be an accompanying message.


The second notification will typically be a few hours after and will contain something like this:

This means that USCIS has mailed your physical file to the Service Center that will be processing your case moving forward.


The third notification will be about a week later and will contain something like this:

This means the Service Center that is processing your file has received the physical file and will begin processing once the adjudicator picks up the batch (based on received date).

Within a week you should receive an NoA-T in the mail, which will look like this (private information has been supplemented by sample info):



What does this mean for me?
This means that for most straight forward cases you may see your NoA2 or an RFE within a month or two. If your case is not straight forward or your case got flagged, it may take longer. Keep in mind every case is different. If you are outside the standard processing times you should contact the USCIS Customer Service line and ask to speak to a Tier 2 Immigration Officer. You should make sure your case wasn't lost in the shuffle, and that it is being worked on. Find out if you missed any notifications or if there is something that you can do to help move it along. Some immigration officers can be quite rude, so always remember to be as polite as possible. These people are overloaded with work and they're just people too. Be clear, concise, and to the point. They are busy people and their time is valuable.

So I can expect to get approved in a month or two?
This is the United States Government. Nothing is a guarantee. You might hear back in a month or two... You might not. It might be an approval, it might be an RFE, it might even be a denial. A lot of cases which were transferred in the past from the VSC to the TSC were adjudicated within 4-6 weeks. Follow the forum posts stay alert, and watch the progress of people within your Service Center to get an idea of what is going on. The speed of who is getting their cases adjudicated has to do with the complexity of the case, whether you're beneficiary is in a high fraud risk country, and the speed in which the adjudicator themselves work.

I am a <Month> filer from that Service Center and I didn't get transferred, should I be worried?
No. The Service centers tend to transfer people in batches. Your case may have already been assigned to someone, or they transferred files between X date and X date, and your file was not within that range. Many times when the files are transferred approvals from both service centers are soon to follow. Don't worry until you're outside of the standard processing time. You can see when your case was last touched, and if it was touched prior to the transfers, chances are you were already assigned.

How do I check to see if my case was "touched"?
If you haven't created an account on the USCIS website you can do so here. If you have you can log into your profile from here (make sure you choose "Customer" for the user type). Once you're logged in you'll see a page that resembles the image below. The "last updated" date shown below is the last time your file has been "touched".



How do you know what the messages mean regarding the electronic and physical files? Nothing in the messages indicates this.
I called a Tier 2 Officer and asked him to explain the transfer process. He explained that for transfers the first email you get is the electronic notification, the second was the actual mailing of the physical files and the third was when the Service Center your files are being transferred to has received the physical files.

I realize the situation here in not typical but maybe someone will be able to help.
So I used to be a green card holder, thus I have "A" number. After surrendering my green card a few years ago I obtained a tourist visa b2 and traveled to the US frequently on a b2 visa.
Now I am going through ds230 and I don't know what to write in question 35 - List dates of all previous visits to or residence in the United States. Give types of visa status, if known. Give DHS "A" number if any.
If I list my visits on a b2 visa do I still have to provide my A number next to these visits? Or the A number would only apply to the times I was in the US as a permanent resident? I don't want to mess it up.

Yes, in our case it took 25 days from transfer until we received our approval notice. From what I've read, most folks have been seeing ~3-4 weeks after transfer for processing.

We can waste money fighting reality or realize that we're pretty connected. At some point the US has to grow up.

Wow.
It seems the problems youre having are coming from your sense of entitlement.
The website is a courtesy, not a right.
The letter you feel you have legal rights to- may not even exist.
You want to check processing times for your case- use the official links.
As Harpa already explained to you "It looks to me like your file is at your local office to be adjudicated. Why do you think you are having an interview exactly? It used to be that if files were sent to the local office it meant interview, but with these new procedures it doesn't necessarily mean that any more. "
Cases are sent to the local offices via computer. The adjudicators there review them. Then then determine if they want to interview you and when they want to interview you.
So you were told by an ISO that you were 'pegged' for an interview. That means you were 'tagged' interview likely or 'needs an interview' or 'must be interviewed' or how ever they tagged you. So, it goes to the local office, and they will decide if and when the interview takes place. Cases can come in with a variety of tags. Definitely interview, potentially interview, doesnt need to interview. All of the definatelys get interviewed, apx 30% of the potentiallys, and 10% of the doesnt, depending on the workload of the office.
If youre sure you were tagged as a 'definitely' then you have to wait for your interview to be scheduled. I really doubt youre going to be able to make an infopass apt and insist that they schedule your appt right then and there while you wait, or interview you on the spot.
The way the computer works if no slots are available it will display- no slots. When a slot becomes available it will automatically fill your name into it and the notice for the interview will be generated.
So again, your issue is there is NO SLOT AVAILABLE YET at your local office. you have to wait until one opens up. when it does the computer will automatically generate your name into it and mail you your interview notice.
Going to the infopass and demanding they put your name into a slot is impossible. They can not put your name into a slot where there are no openings. You feel you are entitled to a notice of an interview that has not been scheduled yet.