Fost04mach

Thank you everyone!  I keep wanting to call them and ask if my case is complete and when they say "yes" I wanna say "I know, I just like hearing it"  I keep logging in to and refreshing the status page like a robot still.  
 
I am still going to follow up with any media outlets that respond (so far I had sent emails to breitbart and fox) and if I get any bites I'll send it out to some more.  The stuff that's going on is unreal and needs to be exposed/people need to be aware of the shambles our immigration system is in... 
 
I hope whoever was on vacation and was holding all of our cases up is back and everyone gets their CCs. Your support and encouragement - and patience with my rants - is invaluable! 

Thank you everyone!  I keep wanting to call them and ask if my case is complete and when they say "yes" I wanna say "I know, I just like hearing it"  I keep logging in to and refreshing the status page like a robot still.  
 
I am still going to follow up with any media outlets that respond (so far I had sent emails to breitbart and fox) and if I get any bites I'll send it out to some more.  The stuff that's going on is unreal and needs to be exposed/people need to be aware of the shambles our immigration system is in... 
 
I hope whoever was on vacation and was holding all of our cases up is back and everyone gets their CCs. Your support and encouragement - and patience with my rants - is invaluable! 

I called again - I figured if I'm frustrated, might as well frustrate some of them some more.  
 
Call started nice, I ended up asking the same battery of questions.  Asked for a supervisor, shockingly there was none available, then asked my closing question:
 
"what's causing the backlog of mail?"
"well sir, the holidays combined with having a new president"
"The holidays and a new president?  You've had my mail originally since September, long before the elections or holidays, what do either of those have to do with it?"
"well sir, the backlog starts before the holidays because everyone wants to have their family here for the holidays.  Happens every year"
"Makes sense I guess.  What does the new president have to do with it, is it a new regulation or new executive order I haven't heard about?"
"well sir, no, not really, no new regulation..."
"Does he inspire people to go out there and get married? or what did you mean by the new president having an impact on this?"
"well not, no, it wouldn't"
"Ok, let's change subjects, next question, now that my 6 weeks of supervisor review are up soon, what is the next step?"
"well sir, we're gonna escalate it to a supervisor (pause realizing how stupid that sounds) errrr supervisor's supervisor" (cautiously realizing he's gonna get called out on his BS)
"Oh, ok.  I imagine that will take 6 weeks as well, like everything before.  How many levels of supervisors are there that I have to go through?"
"well sir, I don't think you have to worry, I understand your frustration and this should have been done by now, but I do believe this will be done soon as it is in the review department getting reviewed right now"
"I've been told that for over a month now... "
"mmm, yes, I see that... well I do believe it will be soon"
"I've started this process over a year ago, what's your definition of soon?"
"I can't give you any more details sir..."
 
 
The backpedaling on blaming the president part was spectacular.  I should have played along and blame Trump instead of asking for details...  These people will make up anything to try and save face, and it's disgusting.  I'd much rather have someone honest go "look, they're playing Pokemon GO over there and not looking at a damn thing, so that's why we don't know when this stuff will get done... ".  I need to start a database of how many of these "alternative facts" I've been given so far, but I just don't feel like going through and re-listening to every call, as it would drive me bonkers. 

I called again - I figured if I'm frustrated, might as well frustrate some of them some more.  
 
Call started nice, I ended up asking the same battery of questions.  Asked for a supervisor, shockingly there was none available, then asked my closing question:
 
"what's causing the backlog of mail?"
"well sir, the holidays combined with having a new president"
"The holidays and a new president?  You've had my mail originally since September, long before the elections or holidays, what do either of those have to do with it?"
"well sir, the backlog starts before the holidays because everyone wants to have their family here for the holidays.  Happens every year"
"Makes sense I guess.  What does the new president have to do with it, is it a new regulation or new executive order I haven't heard about?"
"well sir, no, not really, no new regulation..."
"Does he inspire people to go out there and get married? or what did you mean by the new president having an impact on this?"
"well not, no, it wouldn't"
"Ok, let's change subjects, next question, now that my 6 weeks of supervisor review are up soon, what is the next step?"
"well sir, we're gonna escalate it to a supervisor (pause realizing how stupid that sounds) errrr supervisor's supervisor" (cautiously realizing he's gonna get called out on his BS)
"Oh, ok.  I imagine that will take 6 weeks as well, like everything before.  How many levels of supervisors are there that I have to go through?"
"well sir, I don't think you have to worry, I understand your frustration and this should have been done by now, but I do believe this will be done soon as it is in the review department getting reviewed right now"
"I've been told that for over a month now... "
"mmm, yes, I see that... well I do believe it will be soon"
"I've started this process over a year ago, what's your definition of soon?"
"I can't give you any more details sir..."
 
 
The backpedaling on blaming the president part was spectacular.  I should have played along and blame Trump instead of asking for details...  These people will make up anything to try and save face, and it's disgusting.  I'd much rather have someone honest go "look, they're playing Pokemon GO over there and not looking at a damn thing, so that's why we don't know when this stuff will get done... ".  I need to start a database of how many of these "alternative facts" I've been given so far, but I just don't feel like going through and re-listening to every call, as it would drive me bonkers. 

Rep wouldn't say anything other than it's been escalated to a supervisor on january 6th.  they said 6 weeks hadn't expired yet... and kept repeating that, no matter what question I asked.  I even asked what's causing the slowdown and she said the same thing.  Basically this went on until she got pissed and hung up on me.  
 
I cannot wait to take them to court...  

Well, if you play their games and write it's Trump who ordered to stop processing all the cases and sent all Review Department staff selling Ivanka's merchandise by direct marketing surely some nationwide agencies will consider giving this story a first page!

Unfortunately yes, I agree. What's our problem nobody is really interested in people who are waiting for NVC decision. State Department is concerned with many things like international policy, immigrant visas are definitely not their priority. The only way for us is to find some contact inside NVC to escalate and at least get real answers. 

New York times is garbage. It was a ban on 7 high risk countries. And he banned refugees from only those 7. He also lowered the refugee count to 50,000 fiscal year instead of 110,000. I fully support it.
 
Anyway, yes I hope I hear back from my congressman soon. Seems to have good results from others who have contacted theirs.

Take the stuff you read in the media (especially the New York Times) with a grain of salt.  They are extremely biased against Trump and will make a huge case out of anything... The travel ban has been suspended and there were only a handful of people that were delayed/turned around... out of hundreds of thousands (if not close to a million) of people trying to get in (and out) at borders each day, whether by air or from Canada/Mexico.  These stories are completely blown out of proportion...  And often misleading.  Here's one example that came out at the height of the executive order craze:
 
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4170800/amp/Croatian-woman-detained-LAX-set-deported.html
 
But it turns out it wasn't related.  Did they bother to correct the story? Newp.  
https://www.total-croatia-news.com/politics/16281-foreign-ministry-detention-of-croatian-woman-in-los-angeles-not-connected-with-trump-s-order
 
At this point what the media is doing, is soviet style disinformation at its finest.  

More of a news source than CNN, Buzzfeed & MSNBC... 
 
It's not like there was a sudden huge influx of us citizens going out there and getting married that caused this massive backlog... 

I truly hope that you get CC this coming week. I am so sorry that it is taking so long. Praying for you and for all of us to be reunited with our families. 
The government has no idea what it's truly like to be sitting, waiting, hoping, anticipating getting our families legally to the US. The time, the money, the effort, the emotional toll is has on us all. 
Stay strong my friend, you're almost there. I wish I had better words to comfort, but hopefully soon you'll see those 3 N/A's or get news on the phone of your CC.

I have a 4x4 jeep, I'd gladly offer rides to any of them that want to get the hours paid for working on my case...   I'll even play Eye of the tiger on the way there to motivate them.

Hope it works for you.  I had mailed my congresswoman a letter on Monday, and wrote to the white house via their website on monday as well.  I gave the congresswoman my case number, and all of the required info, but with the white house I didn't give specifics, aka case number, but I made the case for all of us, pointing out that there are thousands waiting for months on end.  I used the "help with a federal agency" option... hope they don't get that many letters and someone actually reads it. 

It could be that the "script" says not to tell people the internal dates but the phone staff feel for us so are breaking from script.  I don't see why they arent transparent other than potentially opening themselves up to lawsuits later 

Congrats man!  Long wait has come to an end and will pay off soon

I'm in my 10th week... and I have a feeling I'll get to 12.  They claim it takes up to 6 weeks to review it... at which point it goes into supervisor review and that can take "up to 6 weeks".  With getting close to the end of those as well, I asked what happens after those 6 weeks of supervisor review are up?  Got 2 different answers, one guy saying he's never seen one go for that long, another saying they go into supervisor review again for up to 6 weeks but that they get complete fairly quick.  
 
Yeah, let me hold my breath.  
 
I'm wondering if writing to the White House would help... Trump seems to be in a house-cleaning mood anyway.

I called on monday and I asked the guy when it'll get solved.. the guy looks at the dates, original scan date 09/22, 2nd scan date 11/25, supervisor review 01/06 and tells me they have 6 weeks for the supervisor review to be complete.  I ask what happens if it's not done by then and he's all "what, no, i have never seen one take that long". I follow up with "well, your website says 2-4 weeks till the process is complete, you guys say 6 weeks initially, then 6 more weeks for supervisor review, it's now in week 10, so you have less than 2 weeks to finish it... so once again, what happens when the 6 weeks of supervisor review are up?"  He was dumbfounded.  
 
I have never encountered this level of incompetence in the private sector... At this point I just hope she'll get her ssn by April 15th so I wont have to file a tax extension with the IRS.  Although I wouldn't mind putting down a reason for the extension "I'm waiting on some lazy incompetent federal government workers who are taking over a year to do their job..."

I called on monday and I asked the guy when it'll get solved.. the guy looks at the dates, original scan date 09/22, 2nd scan date 11/25, supervisor review 01/06 and tells me they have 6 weeks for the supervisor review to be complete.  I ask what happens if it's not done by then and he's all "what, no, i have never seen one take that long". I follow up with "well, your website says 2-4 weeks till the process is complete, you guys say 6 weeks initially, then 6 more weeks for supervisor review, it's now in week 10, so you have less than 2 weeks to finish it... so once again, what happens when the 6 weeks of supervisor review are up?"  He was dumbfounded.  
 
I have never encountered this level of incompetence in the private sector... At this point I just hope she'll get her ssn by April 15th so I wont have to file a tax extension with the IRS.  Although I wouldn't mind putting down a reason for the extension "I'm waiting on some lazy incompetent federal government workers who are taking over a year to do their job..."

I called on monday and I asked the guy when it'll get solved.. the guy looks at the dates, original scan date 09/22, 2nd scan date 11/25, supervisor review 01/06 and tells me they have 6 weeks for the supervisor review to be complete.  I ask what happens if it's not done by then and he's all "what, no, i have never seen one take that long". I follow up with "well, your website says 2-4 weeks till the process is complete, you guys say 6 weeks initially, then 6 more weeks for supervisor review, it's now in week 10, so you have less than 2 weeks to finish it... so once again, what happens when the 6 weeks of supervisor review are up?"  He was dumbfounded.  
 
I have never encountered this level of incompetence in the private sector... At this point I just hope she'll get her ssn by April 15th so I wont have to file a tax extension with the IRS.  Although I wouldn't mind putting down a reason for the extension "I'm waiting on some lazy incompetent federal government workers who are taking over a year to do their job..."

Exactly... The outrage is so blatantly fake, it's not even funny.  A lot of people are going off of things like this, extrapolating it to sound like they're deporting and turning back people who are green card holders, and have nothing to do with those countries and everything else under the sun... Those same people haven't even bothered to read the executive order and weren't outraged at all when this happened 6 years ago... They're outraged because they were told to be outraged and protest.  
 
Let's hope the house cleaning operation - with the 4 senior level staffers fired at the department of state and anyone else that joins them - the replacements will come in and clean this mess up... 

I am curious as to what these reliable sources are.  If that was the case, someone would be in jail, and the media would be screaming about it.  Let's pray this whole hysteria and misinformation stops soon.  
 
There was zero outrage and zero crying senators when this happened in 2011.  Zero.

Only the federal government can take 10 days to send an email... lol

He doesn't hate LGBT people, and even if he did, a law or executive order or anything he might get to pass, that affected one group of people differently from another would be considered discriminatory and would not fly in the supreme court.  The spin on the muslim ban as it was called by the media is just that, a spin, he actually said he would stop immigration from countries with ties to terrorism.  Are you saying all muslim are terrorists? Media went there because and nobody batted an eye... Regardless, even if he said he wanted to ban all muslims from coming in, again, it wouldn't fly because of the anti-discrimination laws (such as the civil rights act of 1964).  
 
Also, this slowdown in processing is because of an executive order passed by Obama.  DACA - deferred action for childhood arrivals is basically a right to work and no-deportation.  This applies to "children" under 31 years of age... Wikipedia estimates around 1.7 million illegals are eligible for this.  
 
Do the math... USCIS and NVC used to push around 300-400k immigration cases per year.  In 2012 you bumrush 1.7 million people through the system.  What do you think will happen? And you bet these people got in front of us all because of the election - yes, officially they're not allowed to vote, unofficially he encouraged them to vote... and there are no Voter ID laws in many liberal states such as California, NY, MN, etc... 
 
I do hope that gets repealed and the madness - of us people trying to do this the right way - can get a break and be together with our families. 
 
 

With the way they're moving for non-electronic people, makes me wonder if it wouldn't have been faster to have my wife move to the Ukraine first... sigh. Congrats!

You and me both, I started my 5th week as well; and as I called yesterday, got the same ol' "read from the screen" response, and when I tried to ask - is it possible to add a note in there for the embassy to schedule the interview as fast as possible as the wife has everything ready to go, because i want the whole thing over before the holidays; I too got some rudeness back.
I simply replied with the fact that I've started this process in January and I'm still waiting for the government to do its job in November. I followed by asking the lady what would happen if the IRS sent me a letter in January and in November I told them they have to be patient...
Apparently the computer screen didn't say anything about that one.