S. & A.

Yes, confirmed closed https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/uscis-office-closings

Anyone else had an appointment at 26 Fed Plaza tomorrow? I had my oath and just got a text from USCIS that they're closed - trying to confirm that it's canceled for sure... I know it'll just be rescheduled soon, but was so close!

Had my interview today - fairly quick process, was given a paper saying I passed the tests and was recommended for approval before I left. Got home and checked online and I've already been scheduled for my oath (June 18). Almost there!

1 hour ago, jimbrackets said:

Interested in this answer too: can you write what the letter says exactly, or upload a screenshot?

 

Also, does anyone have a sense how long n400 applications are taking at this office post-covid?

Just saw the "post-COVID" part and it's not letting me edit my post anymore - I think no one can really be sure about "post-COVID" yet, but I think even before I applied (days before COVID) I'd done some research and was expecting it to take 9-12 months.

1 hour ago, jimbrackets said:

Interested in this answer too: can you write what the letter says exactly, or upload a screenshot?

 

Also, does anyone have a sense how long n400 applications are taking at this office post-covid?

Yeah, the letter is clear that only travel outside the US is an issue (text below) - I'm just worried about possible extra restrictions at the NY offices, though I assume we're past that point by now. Re: how long, you mean from applying to oath? I applied in March 2020 and just got my interview date for May 2021 and oath will probably be June 2021, from what I've seen on VJ for NYC that seems typical. Queens seems a little slower than the other boroughs but they're all around 14-15 months for the process overall.

YOU MUST APPEAR FOR THIS INTERVIEW - However, if you are ill, have any symptoms of illness, have traveled outside the United States within the past two weeks or had contact with a person who tested positive for COVID-19 within the past two weeks, or are at heightened risk due to age or an underlying health condition, call the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Contact Center at 1-800-375-5283 (TTY 1-800-767-1833) as soon as possible to reschedule your appointment. There is no penalty for requesting that your appointment be rescheduled.

Found a thread where someone had the same concern (in CA) and consensus seems to be that it's okay. Should be obvious from the way the letter reads, but I'm just paranoid at this point I guess since I really want to avoid any hiccups and be done with this process soon.

It is okay to travel outside of the STATE in the two weeks before interview, right? Not sure if I have to travel yet, and it'd be by car. The interview notice only specifies to not travel outside the US, but I wanted to make sure there are no other COVID restrictions right now? Thank you.

Finally! I just logged into the website and saw that I got the "interview scheduled" update on April 13. My interview is May 18! 🥳

I'm relieved after 7 years of this to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hope everyone left in our March 2020 thread hears something soon as well.

On 3/30/2021 at 1:07 PM, MaxQueens said:

Thanks! Let us know if you will see any updates. Also, regarding fingerprints, did you receive letter in the mail, or both mail and online status? I dont see any updates online regarding fingerprints reuse.

I finally have news! Never received any sort of notification, but I just logged into the website and saw that I got the "interview scheduled" update on April 13! I also have the document under my documents tab, my interview is May 18. Finally!!! My estimate was a little off, but not that off. (Filed March 2020, Queens)

10 hours ago, GarciaVic said:

we travel back to our mother country once a year. It is impossible to remember the dates, but the total for 5 years outside us is below 150 days, so I think that should be fine with my case...

I'm still waiting for my interview, but for whatever it's worth I think it's extremely unlikely that they would ask you exact dates. There's no point for them to quiz you on that... it's not something people typically remember, and some people travel overseas so often that it would be absolutely impossible. If it were me I would probably just keep in mind the exact number of trips, the country and approximately how long each trip was.

10 minutes ago, aliare said:

thanks! My office is Brooklyn. And I had an actual Bio appointment, not reuse.

Huh, I had no idea that they were doing actual bio appointments. Maybe the office, or maybe that has something to do with it. Thanks and good luck with your oath!

54 minutes ago, aliare said:

Hello everyone!

 

My update so far:

Filed - March 2020 -  New York

Bio Appt - Feb 11 2021

Interview - April 6 2021

Very nice officer, answered all questions correctly, everything took me about 1hr

They scheduled my oath right away for April 9 at 8am

 

Do you know how long is the oath ceremony in New York?

Does anybody know what's going with the passport appointments? looks like nothing is available until end of April, or even May, depending on the locations.

 

Good luck! And thanks to everyone who's posting here! it was much easier to wait knowing other people cases.

Congrats!! Happy to see some movement from fellow March 2020 filers. Do you mind sharing if your local office is the Manhattan one or which one? I'm assuming from your biometrics date that you got a reuse notice that day? Trying to figure out a timeline for myself (Queens), same bio reuse date but have heard nothing yet other than case received. 😅

21 minutes ago, MaxQueens said:

Thanks! Let us know if you will see any updates. Also, regarding fingerprints, did you receive letter in the mail, or both mail and online status? I dont see any updates online regarding fingerprints reuse.

Will do! Nothing yet. Regarding fingerprints, I never got an electronic notification of any kind but saw here on VJ that everyone was getting them so I checked myUSCIS and a "Biometric reuse" notice was there in my Documents tab above my receipt notice. About a week later I also got a physical copy in the mail. There's no update in the case status if that's what you mean, only "case received March 16" or whatever. Only the file in the Documents tab.

8 hours ago, MaxQueens said:

Any Queens filers with filing date July 2020? Still no activity on the case...

4 hours ago, Raul9 said:

I'm June 2020 filer. Only update on my case was biometrics reuse letter in February. It seems even March 2020 filers still didn't get their interviews scheduled.

Yep. I'm a March 2020 filer and nothing yet, so it'll likely be a while. I think we all got a generic update about the biometrics reuse on about the same day in February, even people who had just filed. I saw today that someone filed yesterday and got the reuse letter the same/next day. It's something, but doesn't seem to be a sign our cases were being worked on.

If you look at VJ timelines, the last NYC filer that got an interview filed late Feb 2020. They seem to have gotten the interview notice mid-March and their interview is at the end of April. This is all speculation and I could be super off, but looking at the VJ data points for NYC they seem to be processing cases from one "filing day" in about one real life day, and interview dates are about 5 weeks from the notice. If that is accurate at all, I'm estimating I should be hearing something in a couple of days and my interview would be the first week of May or so. It would be a few more months for you. Will update if I hear anything and to see how off (or not) I was.

On 3/27/2021 at 2:39 AM, VMJ said:

I have the same thing going on too. I don’t even have any estimated completion date. Also when I pull up the case history it would say “Invalid Case date and notice of Receipt was emailed.” Not entirely sure what is going on but this is frustrating.

I've had the exact same experience with the website. Used to be able to download the case snapshot file, but at some point (mid-2020?) I started getting the same error message and "InvalidDate" text in the middle tab. I assume the website got updated and something broke? If someone needs it for the interview it's probably worth sending a message through the site and asking. My documents under "Your Uploads" are still there and I'm able to download them, I never uploaded anything under "Unsolicited Evidence" so can't confirm those.

I also used to have an August 2020 completion date that disappeared by the time August rolled around, and never got a new one beyond "we are taking longer than expected". NYC processing times have always been at like "up to 2 years" so I haven't bothered contacting them. CA seems to be moving faster right now. Hopefully soon!

Hi everyone, it's been a while.

I filed online March 16 and COVID shut everything down the next day so I never got a biometrics appointment (I'm in NYC). I've been checking myUSCIS once every couple of months but no updates until today. I now see a Biometrics Reuse notice on my documents tab from 10 days ago. No notifications, no physical copy and no other updates since. But hey, it's something! My last biometrics are from when I did ROC in early 2017.

I don't know what this means in terms of case progress, but I'm excited to see some movement after almost an entire year of nothing. Fingers crossed that we can all be done with this soon.

So, update time. It took a bit longer for me to receive news compared to the first people in this thread. I think that's probably because I took a couple extra days to send the old card in? Received recall notice 5/18, sent it 5/22, they received it 5/24. I used my own Priority Mail envelope and not theirs, if that matters at all.

The only update I saw for a while was 5/14 "we recalled your green card". I never had an update that said they received my old card and destroyed it like I saw someone else got. The first update I ever got was 6/12 - and it was straight to "we mailed your card". I was pretty surprised. No "card is being produced", nothing. When I go to the case history now, I see a "card is being produced" update dated 6/7 but that was definitely not there when I checked before.

On the other website I got an update with a tracking number (which I never did for the original card) and the card should be coming in a few hours. It was about 3 weeks all in all. Hopefully it's correct this time!

21 hours ago, nywestq said:

I received an update yesterday that my card was being produced. they received my card on the 18th.

Oh, nice, that's very encouraging at least. I guess you received the recall notice earlier than I did. I suppose I could expect an update about a week from now then.

10 hours ago, Manc73 said:

I guess its the luck of the draw, after the way the USCIS has dealt with me hopefully no more than 2 months.

Hopefully! Will let you guys know if there's any updates.

I haven't heard anything yet, and there are no updates in the system. My card was delivered to them the morning of May 24 (I used my own envelope, there's no way I was going to send it without tracking) so it's only been a week I guess, but I really doubt this is going to take 2/3 weeks like they said.

11 minutes ago, Smelserjl said:

See, this is messed up. They should have records of the old card and paperwork proving how long he's been a resident. Same deal for us. A screw up on USCIS printing shouldn't affect N400! So mad about it.

You'd think they would, but  when I looked this up there were a few horror stories of people getting to the end of the naturalization process and the officer being like "lol sorry you haven't been living here long enough according to this system"... I was so defeated I haven't even sent in the application yet. The fact that there is a generalized recall makes me feel more hopeful that the records will be corrected and taken care of and this won't be a problem. I absolutely didn't want to sent a scan of the card with the wrong date, and while I still have my 2-year GC that didn't seem right either being that I've been approved for months.

I'm waiting eagerly for the recall notice/envelope in the mail today but want to be done with this and send in the N-400 like yesterday.

On 5/16/2018 at 11:11 PM, boosbear said:

Oh jeez, I’m so sorry, but at least we are not alone right? 🤦🏻‍♀️  My hubby’s new job has a HR woman who doesn’t believe all of this because she married a British man a million years ago 🤣🤣 & didn’t go through such nonsense for immigration. It’s truly unbelievable if you aren’t living it. 4 years of immigration  (7 years together) & still going through major stress, so many couples would have given up....Shows how strong we are right??? Wishing you a speedy answer & your proper card!!! 😊

boosbear, that really sucks, I'm sorry. I'm not part of the limbo but I am part of the early April faulty green card batch.  

I was sooo excited and relieved to get my GC and then I just rage quit everything when I saw it was wrong (they put our approval date in place of our resident since date, which really sucks because the N-400 specifically asks for this date on the card and now it looked like I'd only been living here for a month and didn't qualify!). Not only that, but the process to replace it seemed to be taking like a year and in some cases interfering with naturalization. Sigh. Turns out the people that set out to correct the mistake early are also in another sort of limbo with this recall thing now because they already sent the card elsewhere.

I'm getting the recall notice/envelope in the mail today. At least I have a card to send I guess. Hopefully this gets resolved quickly for everyone and we can be done with this soon.

My GC is wrong too, sort of glad to know it wasn't just me. Mailed April 2/3, I think, and they put my I-751 approval date as my Resident Since date. I needed the card and felt so upset/defeated at the prospect of having to start a 10 month long I-90 process (and having to explain all of this during the N-400) that I just hadn't taken action since. I'd read on VJ about the typographical error request and was going to try that eventually, but now I guess I'm glad I didn't. I hope it gets resolved soon for those who did - I think being proactive about trying to fix this was really the right thing to do so that sucks. 

I've been getting all the weird past case updates the past few days too but thought it was just their glitchy system. Just received the USPS notice that I'm getting the letter from Eastern Forms Center today in the mail and I'm glad I found this thread. The fact that I was going to have to deal with this sooner rather than later had been looming in the back of my mind and the 15 day turnaround sounds extremely promising and a happy resolution to a process that so far has sucked quite a bit.

1 minute ago, Santos12 said:

You could use the I-94 website to check how many trips you've taken out of the country and how long. The website is meant for nonimmigrants to print their I-94 but for some reason it works for green card holders too. And if you're filing for N-400 based on marriage, you only have to input the last 3 years.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't know you could check that! Though it's actually very easy for me because I actually haven't left the US since becoming a permanent resident.  I thought about doing what you say and just counting the last three years (0 days out of the US for me), the problem is that the form produces a text on the bottom that says (depending on what you input): Days spent outside the US in the past 5 years: 0 which would be blatantly false and makes me a little uneasy.

If I were filing on paper I would write a note saying that this is since becoming a permanent resident, or I would cross out the five years and write three, but this is not an option online. I've spent something like 700 days outside of the US in the past 5 years, just none in the past 3. It's a stupid technicality, but I'm not sure how to go about the restrictions on the online form. I'm sure a lot of people have encountered this...

I finally got the "card is being produced" update today. Nine days after approval, so not bad. Notification system is still unreliable - even though I'm signed up for email/text notifications I didn't receive any. The update also says the card might take up to 120 days to get to me, which I'm hoping is not the case.

Hoping to see some movement on the cases that are still pending.  I know why they can't, but I wish there was a more fair way for them to work in order... at least I guess we're not at CSC.

I've filled out my N-400 - if you filed online, what did you do (or will you do) about the days spent outside the US during the last 5 years? I know they want to know how much time outside the US you spent AFTER becoming a permanent resident, but for those of us filing under the 3 year rule that doesn't make any sense because a lot of us were not living in the US until 2015. The form has you phrase it as "trips outside the US" which also doesn't make any sense, because I was just visiting the US while living in Argentina. The only way I see around this is (to get an accurate count of my days inside the US in the last 5 years) is to phrase it as a really long 1.5 year "trip to Argentina" between the last time I visited the US as a tourist and the day I came back as a permanent resident. This seems wrong, but so does saying I wasn't outside the US in the past 5 years. The form doesn't even offer a space for notes. Sigh. I'm going to look this up on VJ some more, but most things I see seem to be talking about the paper form.

9 minutes ago, bibi_hey said:

Thank you so much

You're fine regarding the extension letter, the only questioning you could face is if you've been out of the US for over 6 months (though I think 6 months is okay and you only need a reentry permit if it's been a year?). I don't know a lot about this, so I would just check to be sure. They might just ask you a few questions about why you were gone for so long to confirm that you didn't intend to abandon your residence.

14 hours ago, naron13 said:

Hi, I am a citizen of Argentina and became LPR through marriage. I sent I751 package and my receipt notice extended my status another year. I know that if process takes more than 12 months, I can get a stamp on my passport.

 

I recently lost my passport and I applied for a new one. Embassy said that it might take longer than 6 months to replace a lost passport. As a result, there is a chance that I may not have a passport for next 6 months which I751’s extension will expire next month. My question is:

 

1 - What kind of problems would I have if my extension letter expires, and I don’t have a passport? Do I have to get that stamp on passport even if I don't need to travel outside of us? Do I have to a passport during or after this process?

 

2 - Will my employment end if I don't get the stamp? (I am already employed and I don't plan to get another job. And I don't plan to leave the US until I751 is completed)

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Hey - I have a few questions because I'm also from Argentina and seem to have misplaced my passport. I don't think it's lost... it should be at home but I somehow can't find it. I don't need it in the near future but seeing that you were told it may take longer than 6 months worries me a little (was expecting that to be much faster). Can I ask where your embassy is? Also, if you lost it, what did you have to bring to get a new one? I read something on their website about a police report being necessary but that doesn't make sense in my case. I should call the embassy one of these days but appreciate the response.

To answer your questions - there's no problem if your extension letter expires. You will NOT be out of status. Your status automatically renews until a decision is made on your case. The only thing is you won't have proof of your status for travel purposes/to get a new ID if yours expires/etc. Your current job should NOT re-verify you.

If you really need the stamp, I read that some USCIS offices will give you a stamp without a passport (on an I-94, if you bring two passport pictures) but some won't. Seems like it depends on location/officer.

49 minutes ago, kafine said:

Oh? I was sure I had read that my status would lapse if allowed to expire! That will be a relief if you are correct.

 

I do have some travel coming up but it will get in just under the wire... so as long as I am back in the US, it should be alright if I can't get a new extension until after the expiry date?
 

Yeah, you can check out this out (and the relevant USCIS links in that article): http://myattorneyusa.com/obtaining-i-551-stamp-as-proof-of-conditional-lpr-status-with-long-pending-form-i-751

In the US you will be fine, but don't let your proof expire while out of the US. Depending on how "under the wire" your travel will be, if you have plane tickets or some sort of proof and would feel better having the stamp you can probably show up to the USCIS office without an appointment and show proof of travel outside of the US for an emergency appointment/stamp. I'm pretty sure I've read that's a thing.