orangeal

I would suggest that you take your time to get married so it doesn't look like she obtained a tourist visa to avoid the immigration system. Six months wait seems reasonable. Humanly speaking though, speaking as one who is twice divorced, it's never a good thing to rush into marriage! Good luck. 

You will probably not have to wait forever like some of us. My daughter applied last July and was done by January. I'm still waiting for my oath ceremony. The agency has committed to completing new cases in six months, if you have been paying attention to the press.

Very frustrating l'm sure. What was the RFE about? 

5 hours ago, Kristina B. said:

So now that I've had time to sleep and process yesterday, here is a more detailed account of what happened.
My appointment was at 8am, so I arrived at the office at 7:30am as one does. I couldn't enter the building until 7:45am though. After I checked in, I had to wait a bit to be called back for my interview. There were four people there waiting (including myself) and at least two of them were there for interviews as well.

I was called back for my interview a few minutes after 8am, and we started with me being put under oath swearing that I would tell the truth. I was more anxious than nervous and my hands were shaking which the immigration official commented on. We then went to the part where I had to answer six of ten questions. I had studied but still felt like I had forgotten all of it. 

The questions I got were:

1. What did the emancipation proclamation do?

2. What is the capital of Alabama?

3. What are the two parties in the US?

4. What did Susan B. Anthony do?

5. Who did the United States fight in World War II?

6. Why does the flag have 50 stars?

Throughout it all, the immigration officer was not shy about expressing his very conservative views, and when I answered the first question with 'freed the slaves in the confederacy' went on to tell me how slavery continued in the north, which led to him asking me if I liked history and the importance of keeping confederate statues up instead of erasing history and how he read 1984 and how that is what is happening now... It felt rather strange and when we got to the topic of voting (because I had answered the question of why I wanted to become a US citizen with how important it was for me to vote) I was advised by him how important it is to look at facts instead of government doublespeak and to not vote based on emotional reasons. He also asked me about my thoughts on current gas prices and launched into a 'my whole family are business owners' speech. All of it seemed very inappropriate.

Throughout those discussions, I also had to read the sentence 'What was the first state?', which I did not know the answer to, and then write 'Delaware was the first state.' 

And with that, I was done. They are currently doing same-day oath ceremonies in Montgomery due to Covid, so I was walked over to another room where I waited for two other people to join us. We had to say our oath of allegiance and then got our certificate of naturalization and we were able to leave. To be honest, the whole oath ceremony felt very anti-climatic. 

What a disgrace that he treated you in such a condescending manner! 

10 hours ago, Kristina B. said:

Interview was today at 8am, by 8:45am I was sworn in. It was a rather anti-climatic end to it all. There were three of us in the oath ceremony, all of us had applied two years ago.

Awesome

44 minutes ago, Cloggie said:

Anybody had similar responses from USCIS?

Very confusing. This is why FOIA might help because then they can't use the missing A-file as an excuse!

8 hours ago, Guido51 said:

hi, what did you do to recieve this message? online message them in your account or email or call? thanks

hi, what did you do to recieve this message? online message them in your account or email or call? thanks

I submitted a service request for "out of normal time processing" after filing FOIA for my A-file. 

2 hours ago, Cloggie said:

Today I received the following message:

 

"The status of this service request is:

USCIS systems indicate that your case is awaiting an interview. Your local USCIS Field Office will contact you once they are able to schedule the appointment."

 

Does this message imply some movement? Or, is it more of the same?

23+ months since I filed...unbelievable!

 

Q

Should I call the Local Field Office?

 

Thx

 

Q

That's similar to the message l got two weeks before my interview notice! 

Awesome!

On 3/9/2022 at 10:39 PM, Guido51 said:

how did you guys use FOIA so they scheduled your interview? pelase share. thanks

I'm somewhat skeptical about this but considering that we are dealing with an inept bureaucracy, it may be that this is the quickest way to retrieve your A-file. There's some degree of automation to the system so the availability of your A-file probably triggers some action. Computers talking to bureaucrats! That would be my guess. There's people that have done this and are still waiting. So it's not a magic bullet.

3 minutes ago, Cloggie said:

Thank you!

do l leave the purpose of the request empty?

I left it blank. 

12 minutes ago, Cloggie said:

Do I request the whole A-file, guys?

Yes!

59 minutes ago, Kristina B. said:

I don't know if it was because of the FOIA request, but my interview is now scheduled for April 1st!!!l

Awesome! Me too. April 12. Filed FOIA and was in step 3. However, they had already told me to expect an interview notice within 30 days after l submitted an enquiry. So the jury is still out there on FOIA, I guess. But l think it's better to file than not just because it gives you a sense of having some control over your own fate!

Submitted another "out of normal time" service request two days ago and this morning got an email promising to send an interview notice within 30 days. Something about scheduling  of the interview not yet done. And by the way, bring the notice with you to the interview! And l'm like, f, where's the notice? What you waiting for if you already know you are going to send it? Bizarro!

5 minutes ago, AH2020 said:

I filed April 20, 2020, Field office is San Diego. 

I have opened several service requests, contacted congressman, Senator, Ombudsman. They said my file was stuck at the NRC.  I filed the FOIA on 12/10. I honestly have no idea if this is what triggered things but it obviously didn't hurt. 

Thanks and good luck. Your date is very close to mine (April 18) but Detroit field office's hands are tied, really. They're waiting for NBC.

9 minutes ago, Yupibotan said:

Finally decided to pull the trigger and submitted FOIA request too. At this point nothing can make it worse 🙂

Not to discourage anybody from being proactive about their case, but my Congressional aide was told that they will not take extraordinary measures with my case unless l can make a compelling case showing how not being a citizen is impacting my life or dependents negatively. Date of filing is not a sufficient reason. I have submitted several 'out of normal time requests'. In fact, as soon as l get a response ( still working on your case!), I submit another. Recently, they locked me out of the submission portal for some days because of my perseverance. That's how it is. I'm used to shoddy treatment just based on who l am and where l come from, so nothing surprises me. We shall overcome!

26 minutes ago, AH2020 said:

OMG finally some good news. I logged into my account this morning and got my interview notice. I am scheduled for Feb 9, at 8:00am. I cannot believe it. Fingers crossed they will not cancel it again like they did some other people. 

Nice. What's your field office and date of filing? Did you do anything special to push your case?

20 minutes ago, KatieL said:

I hope you're doing whatever you can to speed them up. I chalk my "progress" up to reaching out (twice) to Ombudsman and then to my local congressman. 

Tried all that. No movement. So now I am trying flattery! I'm pretty sure that I will hear from them soon, now that I have started to recognize their excellent work. They are second to none. Can anyone think of a government  department that's performing better than them? Scrach, scratch, scratch.

10 minutes ago, KatieL said:

My NOA is from 1/26/2020

10 minutes ago, KatieL said:

My NOA is from 1/26/2020

Well. I guess that means I only have to wait another three months since l filed three months after you. Thank you so much USCIS. You are the hardest working government department in America.  You all deserve a raise. Excellent 👍 work! 

17 minutes ago, KatieL said:

Guys, I can't believe this. It's almost 3 years since filing I-751 and 2 years since filing N-400, and today I just got updates on both: card is being issued and interview is set up in 2 weeks. I did reach out to ombudsman and congressman both, so maybe one of those (or both) things helped speed things up. At this point, I am sure it was just stuck on the farthest shelf because people who filed way later than us are getting citizenships. I'm almost certain there are no "security checks" happening still 2+ years later; it's just a system's mistake that nobody bothers to correct. Please keep fighting; don't just sit and wait like I was for such a long time.

When did you file your N400 KatieL?

15 minutes ago, JustBelieve said:

Yeah, people here are really making me laugh. Like guys we have tried all the resources to no luck and our cases are stuck in limbo so why not try something that may trigger our cases to be picked up again?

If l thought for a moment that this would be useful, l would do it. But l don't. 

One thing that will get your case expedited is if you can claim an emergency situation. I was offered that through my congressman but l don't have any emergency associated with citizenship. If your circumstances are dire, you should write to USCIS! 

6 minutes ago, eizerr said:

I did it during the creation time. 

 

Honestly speaking filing this request took 5 minutes for me, and I don't think it worth a debate like we see here. 

 

It may help or it may not, in the worst case one spends 5 minutes, so why not to try. 

I'm gonna let this one pass for now. They should do their job. For which - by the way - they were handsomely paid. 

6 hours ago, Yupibotan said:

I really want to believe in a a fairytale about FOIA accelerating our cases and will closely monitor this thread. If I see any progress, I'll also do an FOIA. 

 

But here is why I'm sceptical. 

 

Even if uscis requested an a-file to process our cases, it's likely an e-ticket request in their internal case management system sent to NRC (or whoever is in charge of an a-files). Until this ticket is resolved (electronic copy of a-file sent to uscis) by NRC, our cases cannot move forward in their case management system. 

 

When we do FOIA, NRC likely resolves our personal e-ticket request, not the one that was originated by uscis. Therefore I don't see any logic in FOIA helping us.  I doubt they are smart enough to link out FOIA ticket to our N400 case. 

 

Of course, all above is my speculation based on my IT background and some experience with non-profit and government IT systems in the US. It's usually an IT mess multiplied by bureaucracy. 

 

There's tons of assumptions we make about our cases, a-file stuck is NRC is just one of many other unknown reasons. 

 

Hope I'm wrong 🙂

I'm afraid you are right. You will have noticed that nobody has been able to articulate the mechanics of it.  Either way, we are all going to come out of this a little wiser. 

On 12/14/2021 at 2:07 PM, Cloggie said:

I read about some people filing a FOIA and have success with it? Not sure about this procedure, but I am going to look into it now.

 

You can do it here https://www.uscis.gov/records/request-records-through-the-freedom-of-information-act-or-privacy-act

What l am saying is that when you you file a FOIA, the retrieval of your A-file is done by the NRC. These are the same people who are supposedly having a hard time pulling files because of staffing issues. If they can't find time to retrieve files for USCIS, where are they going to find time for you? Why would they prioritize your request at the expense of another government department? I don't get it.

Why would they prioritize pulling your A-file, if the problem is that they are short-staffed? I'm skeptical