Erichu

Anyone who just had an interview and request for visa pickup? Is it not hard to request for it?

Looking forward for some experiences you can share. Thanks.

Congratulations! It must be party time right now?

Goodluck on your visa journey! Goodluck to us!

Gomez & Angelmae - Do you know where your fiancees' are? LOL! Hopefully they have completed the pre-interview. Bring on the Consular Officers... Let's get this approval party started. I'll bring the vodka. We need to put together a potluck. LOL! YYB you are bringing the pancit and PW has the adobo. LOL!

i'll bring spaghetti, filipino style, with hotdogs and a cake from Goldilocks.

I just heard from Angelmae and she is approved today as well. Patientlywaiting can you update the tracking list for this. The consul must be in a good mood today. Thanks for all your help on this site (Uling in particular those links on your signiture are great much better information than from the lawyer I hired). Though I won't be entirely comfortable until she has visa in had .

Brian

Congrats!!! this is really awesome to know! and yes you are right about Uling's link, really very helpful. I am looking forward to my interview to be smooth too. (No schedule yet though) .. Congrats again!

We are APPROVED!!!

Jenn says it was quick and painless (I'll let her give you the details)

Thank you everyone for your support and we are pulling for you...It can be done...dont sweat it!

I'll be calling Northwest Airlines in the am.

Regards

GOMEZ

Congrats!!! Wow!!! this is too cool to know! Hope to have an easy and smooth interview too.

Congrats guys!!

Your timeline looks very much like ours. Those couple of touches after the approval may be sending to NVC.

There's no guarantee but it's worth a try to call NVC this Monday to check. Call 603-334-0700 during the morning EST and talk to a person. The automated response system isn't reliable and even if you ask by email, you will not be told the date the petition was shipped to the US Consulate.

Enjoy the approval and good luck for the rest of the journey.

People who have toured the USCIS facilities and talked with the people who run them and the various operations within them report that the 'customer information' systems that we and the NCSC staff see are indeed separate from the other data and process systems, and require human input to update.

Insane maybe, archaic is probably a better word, but that's they way it is. It does have the benefit of increased scurity by insuring that people like the NSCS telephone answering staff are kept out of the critical systems.

Yodrak, how long ago did this tour happen? Things do change you know. But taking your word only reinforces my viewpoint about the severe inadequacies of USCIS in accomplishing their own stated policies. Is the practice of people updating multiple systems with the same data insane? Yes, it's a recipe for the screw-ups we see. Is it archaic? No, the practice of feeding data to external systems for purposes of reporting and status review is decades old. And a one way feed of data into external systems is a lower security risk than individuals making separate updates. It it simply another lame excuse made by USCIS.

I stand 100% by every word of my original post here. The CSC is failing us and not delivering their own policies of fair treatment based on order received. If you read that post, it is obvious that I never stated, as you claimed, that petitions should be approved in the order received. I said that older petitions are often sitting idle and unprocessed while newer ones are being processed due to faulty computer systems. And that does lead to the random and unfair lottery of quick and very slow approvals. In the future, please read carefully before you put false words in my mouth. I will be happy to do the same for you.

I wish you well in your assistance to other folks here. I'm done on this subject.

Yodrak,

I don't pretend to be an expert in Immigration but I can see that you simply don't understand how the kinds of computer systems that USCIS uses work or need to work. That is something I know well and so you ought to try to expand your own understanding here.

The systems used by CSC, by the USCIS customer service staff, and the web pages we use are not things that must be separately updated by people. That would be insane. These systems provide views to the same data or, at worst, data updates flow across these systems. It's Data Management 101.

When the systems are buggy, as the USCIS systems are, then data does not flow reliably and system failures multiply. The online website we view presents simple touches and status changes. They are a window showing us the poor quality of the information managed by USCIS. If the data we see is fouled up and a simple email notification system is unreliable, then you can be sure the far more complex workflow management systems in CSC are worse. And all the resulting screw-ups of random processing and approvals will then naturally occur.

All the symptoms of an inefficient and mismanaged organization are blinking red for CSC. Long waits to open mail, long periods of zero PROCESSING activity on older petitions, randomly long waits to simply mail approved petitions to NVC. There is no excusable reason an approved petition may sit for over a month before a simple administrative task of shipping to the NVC occurs and, during that same period of time, other petitions ship out in days.

If the job was really so hard, why is the Vermont office almost never slow in opening, processing, or delivering petitions to NVC? Larger numbers of petitions in CSC are not the answer. The USCIS philosophy towards us, their customers, is CMA and LMA (Cover My ### and Leave Me Alone). Their public status report to us is an outright lie. The information in VJ lays bare all their lies and failures and I am grateful that we are able to speak frankly, share information, and see where we really stand.

Erichu,

I understand perfectly what is being said in this thread. Some people's petitions reach the point where they can be approved more quickly than other's and they don't understand why.

And then they write, incorrectly, as you did, that approval should be given in queue order. But it isn't, never has been, and cannot be, if there is to be a workable system.

Yodrak

Yodrak,

I know you provide plenty of useful info here to many people so I'm not looking to antagonize you. Let's look at what I originally wrote.

It's not hard to see what is wrong. The computer systems that are essential to managing this massive volume of work are full of problems. We received our NOA2 letter weeks ago and the online systems still shows our petition as not approved. I never received the email notification that I signed up for. The "customer service" people also see our application status as not approved but said I shouldn't worry about as long as I have the NOA2 letter.

If the systems are inaccurate, the work cannot be properly managed. So work that ought to be processed based on date order may be ignored for months. The tracking systems essential to reminding somone to pick up the right petition at the right time up don't work. What happens instead is what we see - random processing that goes against CSC's own policies. And to make it worse, we aren't permitted to inquire about our petition to CSC, and so we have no way to let anyone know that our file is being ignored.

If you had read this carefully, you would have understood that I was talking about processing and not approval. Processing leads to approval and so processing out of order leads to approvals out of order and also leads to unconscionably long wait times for those whose petitions are simply forgotten due to faulty tracking systems. If the long waits were due to some petitions being far more complex, we would see more activity (touches) during the long waits. We don't. We see months pass with zero activity. No processing.

The VSC has a workable system that somehow has much fewer people falling through the cracks. You are wrong in this case that CSC could not fix this problem. They could and they should.

Best wishes to you Yodrak.

Hi guys,

You are fortunate in that you have found the place where you CAN get some very good information about this process every step of the way. Just by comparing the timelines here with the report published by USCIS, you can see that their report is pure misinformation. As another poster mentioned, it is strictly CYA and LMA (leave me alone!). That is the true USCIS policy towards us petitioners. CSC is processing applications received from April through September. That is what you can see by looking here.

The bad news is that the process remains highly variable and unpredictable by individual. There's a lot of luck involved and you may get an opportunity to build character through remaining calm and upbeat as you watch others being processed and approved while you are inexplicably motionless for a long time. The other bad news is that is it completely worthless to call the customer service line because they will tell you exactly what you see by looking in their online system for yourself and CANNOT pass along any question you may have to the CSC. Oh yeah, and their online information and email notifications are also pretty unreliable so you never know when that NOA2 may appear without warning in your mailbox.

The good news is that this site is a fount of information about processing timelines, embassy interviews, and any question you may have. Also good is that the NOA2 timeline published here is longer than your expected time because of the backlog of IMBRA petitions (delayed 3 extra months) being completed. You simply need to look at the range of individual timelines to get a sense of your expected time.

So now you can only wait patiently for your NOA1 to arrive in the mail. It may be today or a month from the day you sent it in. You're at the start of a long process and I wish you luck!

Congrats and best wishes!!!

You gotta love these Long Distance Relationships! It takes a lot to keep them alive and get through the long, long wait between visits and before that Visa is finally in our hands.

One thing I've been doing for my Mari, aside from coming to the Philippines as often as I can and our nightly webcam chats, is recording homemade songs to MP3 for her to load to an ipod so I'm always near. I bought my first guitar in an online music store last year and a ukulele a couple of months ago. It's been fun learning something new and helps keep us close too.

Mari's been keeping a weblog for us so we can look back on our long (2 years now!) LDR. She's been wanting to post a few of my songs on the blog but I didn't know how how until very recently. VJ has been such a great and helpful place for us sharing info and meeting other couples going through the same hard process. So we're feeling better to open up a little and share our blog.

So if you wanna see some cute pics and have a nice laugh hearing some special LDR songs, take a look...

Erichu Weblog

Hope you like it and please feel free to share anything else homemade (audio, video, whatever) that keeps your LDR alive.

my Honey, thank you for appreciating lil things that i do for you and for making this LDR a lot easier to deal with. It should have been soooo hard but because you always inspire me, it became simply easier!!! I love you so much! Mmmmmuah!

Mari

Yodrak, Are you even reading this thread. or just skimming? You don't seem to grasp what is being said.

Uh oh.

Well jeez! It's a bit annoying to be told something so obvious that everyone here already knows it, and then to have it repeated verbatim further down in the same thread. Yodrak can speak up if he's got something to add here. But if he thinks the pathetic lottery of luck that is CSC Visa processing can be defended, he's got some explaining to do beyond stating an obvious and irrelevent point over and over.

Thanks for the comments.

Mari's smile is something special but it's just a hint to her inner beauty. She is just as sweet natured and fun as her smile looks. She has a great ability to be upbeat and always make the best of things. I've learned how to value the relationship more than anything else and it's made every day with her amazing.

And thanks also for the charitable comment about the music. It is fun to create something that is appreciated by your loved one. A little scary to let others hear it.

Whatever is going on, it's the restaurant owner pulling the strings. The taxi guy is a slob and a lowlife but he appears to be a pawn in whatever scheme the restaurant guy has in mind. It sounds like some kind of bait and switch where this USC is being lured somewhere on a false promise. What actually happened when he arrived is anybody's guess. His drunken behavior shows that he is a perfect target for a major rip-off. My guess is he is already suffering the consequences of his foolishness.

The most important person to check into would be the restaurant guy. The problem is you don't really have a clue who he is or what has happened and so I doubt you will get anywhere. For that reason it's probably not worth pursuing.

You gotta love these Long Distance Relationships! It takes a lot to keep them alive and get through the long, long wait between visits and before that Visa is finally in our hands.

One thing I've been doing for my Mari, aside from coming to the Philippines as often as I can and our nightly webcam chats, is recording homemade songs to MP3 for her to load to an ipod so I'm always near. I bought my first guitar in an online music store last year and a ukulele a couple of months ago. It's been fun learning something new and helps keep us close too.

Mari's been keeping a weblog for us so we can look back on our long (2 years now!) LDR. She's been wanting to post a few of my songs on the blog but I didn't know how how until very recently. VJ has been such a great and helpful place for us sharing info and meeting other couples going through the same hard process. So we're feeling better to open up a little and share our blog.

So if you wanna see some cute pics and have a nice laugh hearing some special LDR songs, take a look...

Erichu Weblog

Hope you like it and please feel free to share anything else homemade (audio, video, whatever) that keeps your LDR alive.

Erichu,

Again - the processing is, the approving is not. Processing and approving are two different things, stop equating them.

If approvals were required to be in queue order the backlog would be endless given that not all cases can be easily and quickly decided.

Yodrak,

You are making the simplest, most elementary point that any schoolkid in a lunchline understands. If you can look at Hornet's timeline or kitkat's or mine and explain how we were not left unprocessed for long periods of time when other, later petitions were being processed then do so. If you can explain how any large organization manages a complex processing pipeline with vastly unreliable systems and data, then do so.

Are you even reading this thread. or just skimming? You don't seem to grasp what is being said.

You may already be a winner!!

We can only guess but these touches following the receipt of your RFE are encouraging. It is exactly what we saw when we were approved. And the lack of email and online status change means nothing - the email system is broken. You may be already approved, but you won't know it until your NOA2 arrives in the mail. Don't start the celebration though because you just never know. Those touches are a good thing, enjoy the touching!!

Mari and I have been together for two years already. You think the Visa process is hard, try the divorce process - just brutal!! That took over 18 months. But our LDR has survived and is stronger than ever. We've got hundreds of pics from a bunch of trips. We've put a few in our profile. What I have attached here are some screenprints from our last chat yesterday. The truth is I still go weak in the knees when Mari moves close in the cam. Her love is the sweetest thing in my life.

I couldn't disagree more here. Hornet is absolutely right. The processing and approving of petitions is not first-come-first-served. His March application was complete - RFE returned in late July. He should have been approved within weeks as other petitions were after the RFE was returned. Instead his petition sat untouched for almost three months while countless petitions were approved that had RFE's returned after his.

The part you don't understand or may not be aware of is that the processing and approving of petitions in March/April/May was majorly affected by IMBRA. Hornet + 10,000 other applicants were affected. We all watched as people who filed in June got their approvals before us. It was a mess and obviously CSC is not a well run machine.

But the fact remains that Jasal's application was NOT affected by IMBRA. Others are not jumping past her petition - she filed in August. IMBRA fiascos aside, application are processed in the order received. But every case is different and some cases do get held up while others move along. Vermont filers usually speed through - but you can be sure that if there is a name hit or a criminal history even a Vermont filer will be held up. Does that mean their petition is not being processed in the order received? NO. I'm not disagreeing with all the other complaints - the "help" line, the email situation, etc. I'm still stuck in it and I will be for a long time to come. But Jasal's petition is moving along at normal speed, as it should.

Hi Kitkat,

I know from my own experience about the whole IMBRA mess. Our petition was sent in on June 8 using the old I-129F form. It arrived on the 12th and lay unopened until June 30 - NOA1 Date of July 3. We watched in VJ and saw RFE letters going out in July to most of the March-June people. Had they even opened our envelope the week it arrived, I have little doubt we would have been in that group. Instead, we waited and waited for an RFE without a word or a touch until late September. We watched petitions that were submitted in late June and July being approved before we even received our RFE. We also saw folks like yourself and Hornet who were waiting far longer than us and felt a lot of sympathy for your situation as well.

We don't pretend to be the worst impacted but we did experience all the abuse and frustration of waiting while other, later petitions moved, making futile attempts to get answers from USCIS, making an InfoPass apointment and getting nowhere with an immigration official, and finally preparing to make our case to our US Representative's office, when the RFE finally arrived.

Jasal's case isn't terrible compared to what the IMBRA folks had to endure. I can still understand their frustration in not knowing if their petition is misplaced, whether they have a week or 3 months of waiting left, and that the queue of petitions is being mismanaged while they have no way to even inquire about their own.

You counsel patience Kitkat and I agree there. We just have to find a way to be happy for those who get their approval, whether fast or slow, and understand what actions can be effective and when we can take them. How is your wait for interviews in Mexico looking? Is there decent info in VJ on wait times? We are looking at about four months in Manila.

Good luck to all!!! We need it!!

What got me riled up was, "all cases are processed in the order received", which we all know is a crock.

Thank the gods for kitkat and her patience. You want to know serenity? Read more from her and JerseyGirl. Didn't you read Yodrak's post? How can it be a crock? If they come to a puase or delay in one case, the whole line should stop until that one is done?

Have a little faith, sheesh. Millions of petitions and applications are processed through there every year. A very small percentage have real problems.

The Prez promised you results in 6 months. That IS your timeframe.

(and touches mean nothing! )

I couldn't disagree more here. Hornet is absolutely right. The processing and approving of petitions is not first-come-first-served. His March application was complete - RFE returned in late July. He should have been approved within weeks as other petitions were after the RFE was returned. Instead his petition sat untouched for almost three months while countless petitions were approved that had RFE's returned after his.

It's not hard to see what is wrong. The computer systems that are essential to managing this massive volume of work are full of problems. We received our NOA2 letter weeks ago and the online systems still shows our petition as not approved. I never received the email notification that I signed up for. The "customer service" people also see our application status as not approved but said I shouldn't worry about as long as I have the NOA2 letter.

If the systems are inaccurate, the work cannot be properly managed. So work that ought to be processed based on date order may be ignored for months. The tracking systems essential to reminding somone to pick up the right petition at the right time up don't work. What happens instead is what we see - random processing that goes against CSC's own policies. And to make it worse, we aren't permitted to inquire about our petition to CSC, and so we have no way to let anyone know that our file is being ignored.

What the USCIS tells us is strictly worst possible case and represents the most pathetic level of service. Their promise is fair treatment and no preferences. Whether it takes one month or six, we have a right to be maintain our place in the long queue of petitions and to be able to let USCIS know when they may have misplaced our petition due to their massively unreliable tracking systems.

I agree that it's best to remain mostly calm about it since we are in a helpless position but the fact is that we are being mistreated here and CSC is an abysmal failure in the execution of their mission.

Thanks everyone!! and I hope the other Marcher's get approved asap. There's not too many left.

I just pray I get to NVC and through there quickly as possible.

I'd like your timeline through there Erichu!! Holy cow!

My buddy just called USE Manila and they said they make K-1 interview appointments once a month??

His petition got there in Sept., we filed the same day. But they missed him when they made appointments in Oct.

She said they'll be making more appointments in mid Nov.

I sure hope mine can get there in time if that's true. otherwise it'll be Dec for a Feb. interview? maybe??

As you saw, we got super-lucky on the CSC-NVC-USE steps in the process after some bad breaks within CSC. You deserve some of that same speedy service.

Hornet, you are still in for some serious waiting but at least you will get fair treatment soon. The day your petition arrives at the NVC seems to determine the NVC Case number MNL2006xxxxxx and that number sets your place in line for interviews in Manila. Currently it's about a 4 month wait from the time your petition arrives in Manila to the interview date. I would guess you are looking at a March interview if your petition gets to NVC in the next 3 weeks or so. Good luck!!

Just trying something! You can ignore this. Have a great day!!

HELLO EVERYONE....I WAS JUST TOLD THAT MY PETITION WAS FORWARDED TO THE EMBASSY....I'M SOOOOO HAPPY I TOLD THE NVC AGENT THAT I COULD JUST HUG HER...SHE TOLD ME THAT SHE NEEDED A HUG ALSO . Wow it's been a roller coaster ride this week, I went from No NVC, to NVC and now to Embassy (that rhymes). I'm wishing everyone the best, and please DON'T GIVE UP HOPE. The system is crazy, but in the end this will all come to pass!!!!

cubanlovestory8monthspregnant(F) praying that he will be here before my due date late December

Congrats!!!! Yes the NVC folks I have spoken with were helpful and nice people as well. Doing this while pregnant is really tough!! Don't let this stuff upset you. Enjoy your freedom from USCIS!!

The time will pass and you will be together.

Good luck!!

I am having a problem updating our avatar photo. The file is jpg and less than 100 x 100 pixels. I do the upload and it says "replaced" but I see my original picture. I also tried disabling the avatar (worked fine), then uploading the new jpg file and I get the original image. Logging out and back in do not help either.

So I'm out of ideas and workarounds - Help!!!

Oh by the way, Mari and I are so grateful for this site and all the work assembling and updating tracking information. You guys have provided a GREAT service here.

Thanks!

I PM'd you .

As you requested, here's the pic..

Thanks!!

YUP!! About damm time!! 234 days!!!

I have just received word that the petition is approved. It will be sent to our records division to remove the I-129f from our file and forward the petition to the National Visa Center. This part of the process takes as much as two weeks and then transit in integration into the NVC takes about 3 weeks. Therefore, it is safe to say that the petitioner will receive notice from the NVC regarding the visa application some time in very early December

Congratulations Hornet!!!! It's wayyyyyy past time that you got your approval.

I'm glad you went to your congressman's office. You still have every right to be unhappy with this woman who has made the absolute minimum effort on your behalf and has been consistently rude and unhelpful. You should make a complaint about her to your congressman's office. You deserve expedited treatment in getting your petition to the NVC. I would make a complaint in a letter to her boss and to the Congressman himself. Unless she is running that office, you ought to be able to speak to her superiors and make them aware how, despite the fact that you were totally mistreated by the CSC, she provided minimal help and a terrible attitude to boot.

They are expecting you to wait until DECEMBER before you allowed to ask anyone a question and that's ridiculous. A little venting is in order here!

Good luck in the next steps of your journey!!