ptcfast2

Got a hold of the Texas Service Center directly today and they finally forwarded my case to the NVC after a month within an hour of contacting them!

I decided to go ahead and contact my representatives, Ombudsman, and a Tier 2 ISO about how my petition hasn't been forwarded to the NVC yet. April 4th TSC approval, and many a petition after mine have had the post-decision status updates stating the has been forwarded to the Department of State for processing. Representatives were communicative, Ombudsman didn't reject my request, and ISO opened a service request after persuading her.

I made a point to the Tier 2 ISO when I placed the request that not just my petition, but a few others from the same approval date of April 4th at TSC, have not been forwarded. I asked her if she could figure out why it has not been forwarded yet - she seemed relieved that I wasn't just complaining and getting angry. I explained my reasoning behind my actions: It takes time to get this done, it takes time for service requests to be responded to (and then having to start over with escalations if you don't get anywhere), and it's just a generally slow process. She understood that I was trying to be proactive in making sure things move along. She also told me that each adjudicator "bundles" petitions to be sent and has to wait for assigned tracking numbers, etc... so it's possible the officer either is still waiting, the officer is out on some type of PTO/leave, the storage container got misplaced, or it's been shipped to storage instead of the NVC by accident.

I'm not exactly upset, but I do think that the other petitions I found may not be so VisaJourney savvy so if what I'm trying to accomplish moves those along as well I've helped either way. Regardless of all of this, I still find it silly how the USCIS handles things.

Hi All,

My case haven't been shipped to NVC yet. This is the 7th week and NVC doesn't have my case. What are my options at this point in time? I already sent an email to nvcresearch@state.gov with the approval notice twice and still no response from them. Called USCIS and opened a ticket with them to track my file down.

With so much time lost, is our petition going to expire? What are the rules around expiration of a petition after 4 months?

Please advise.

-Best

1) Fill out this: https://cisomb.dhs.gov/oca/form7001.aspx

2) Contact your Senators and Representatives and request they help you with your case. Usually they get you an answer VERY shortly as they have contacts within the USCIS.

Did you get a "Post Decision Activity" notice?

Nope, and none of the other ones I found from around my case number or approval dates did either. I did found a few that said forwarded to NVC on the 11th (possibly yours per your signature?) It's also possible they all did get forwarded and some didn't get status updates. None of these had RFEs either like yours did as well - so that's something that's different about your petition compared to these.

But it's just odd - the others in my grouping (10 or so petitions that got approved slowly over a two week period) just stopped getting a forwarded message after the 4th. Same with the other groups I found minus a few oddball petitions. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!?!

It seems a bunch of approvals after April 3rd have been stalled at TSC and have not been sent off to the NVC.

Called them today and did some case number checks for random petitions on USCIS's site. All of a sudden after the 3rd no more NVC forwarding notifications for approved petitions - my guess is they must either ship off when they have a full load or anything approved after the last batch sent to NVC is shipped off when they hit a deadline date regardless of load- whatever comes first I guess.

When your Alien Registration Number is changed it simply means that the beneficiary of the petition has said number assigned to him/her in the system. This is basically the way they can associate things back to the beneficiary such as background checks and documents.

If you've received one it means your case has pretty much been sorted and put into the giant boxes for processing - now it's just a waiting game. Even if you haven't, I wouldn't worry - the USCIS site sometimes misses a step when it comes to reporting. If you got a NOA1 you're fine.

I received my NOA1 on Dec 5th, and I just got my NOA2 this morning from TSC. It was approved on April 4th, but they didn't update the status update until now. A bunch of other petitions around my number have been getting approved this past week as well.

Talk about GREAT news to start a week and Monday with!

From what I've gathered it's about 4 months of so for the backlog at the moment. I'm a Dec 5th filer and just got approved this morning.