badwolfxi

4 minutes ago, Inveigh said:

Not quite yet, I received an expedite for my NOA 1 so im sending out the same paperwork and Expedite request over to the NVCexpedite@state.gov now.

oh yeah I remember reading one of your posts before. Maybe that's why yours is first in line. Good luck hamvatan (you or your fiancée). Zan. Zendegi. Azadi.

8 minutes ago, Inveigh said:

Hi all,

 

I got this in my E-Mail this morning, 

 

January 11th was my NOA-2 Date

 

They're going LIGHTNING FAST

Well damn, seems that way. I was going to wait till next week to send my first inquiry but I think I'll do it now. Did you send an inquiry to get a case number? You should do so now if you haven't.

In case anyone hasn't checked yet, looks like things are speeding up at the NVC. They were 9 weeks behind last week, now just six weeks behind.

36 minutes ago, ameriran said:

Hey there, I am starting the CR1 process and am similar situation where I fear my old case may be AWA. Would you recommend Lolly as an attorney? I just reached out to them based on this thread

 

Congrats on your acceptance!

Thanks.. so I'll tell you honestly that I cannot recommend them. Lolly will speak with you at first, when you hire them and make payment they pass it off to the paralegals. My paralegal was Yareth Sarmiento. I don't want to say she doesn't do a good job, because she did the research, found the specific part of the law where my case would not be applicable as an AWA case, and wrote out a memorandum to send over to USCIS.

I'll state all the issues now along the process, which are very similar to issues other people have had if you go check their reviews on Google. Lack of communication, spelling errors and mistakes on basic facts about the case like that's it's a fiancée visa petition. Then more lack of communication, not responding to emails. Not calling when she says she will. When she did respond, it was great. She took care of the issue and I was satisfied. But I felt like it really should not be like this. She also did not send out the memorandum when we fixed all the issues on it. I got back to her after a few months and she told me she will send it out asap. After that then finally I had a case update saying "correspondence received".

In conclusion, do a bit of research and look for another attorney, check their reviews on Google especially.

4 hours ago, SeaSing said:

In further discussion, this looks like it is 40 days to receive case from USCIS and then 60 days to process and then send to embassy, per visa journey. So average time currently for it to get to NVC and then get sent to embassy is close to 90 days. Sigh. 

 

 

 

Well not exactly, think about it this way, NVC is still doing case creation from what was received by them mid to late November. It wouldn't matter if USCIS did express overnight delivery. By the time they catch up, the new cases would have already arrived. They're not sitting there twidling their thumbs until they receive cases. So it doesn't make sense to just add those numbers up and say that's how long it takes for it to get to the embassy. 45-60 days for case creation, then it gets sent to the embassy, which is like a week tops.

16 minutes ago, SeaSing said:

What is the average time to receive NVC case # so we can start tracking to embassy? I've read 30 days, 45 days, up to 90 days, but hard to get a consensus on what the average is right now. 

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/nvc-timeframes.html

Joining this thread, our NOA2 is Jan 16 '23. If I had to guess, looking at NVC timelines, our case file creation will probably be mid to late March. Maybe sooner hopefully as the slowdown from the holidays dwindles down.

22 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

Would you like for the thread to be locked now that everything's resolved?

Oh that's alright, I'm not really bothered by the occasional notification, it never got that busy here anyway.

11 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

I echo Powerpuff.  Really appreciate the good news and the closure.

You're welcome tbone, you can toss this one in the books. Of course it's very specific circumstances, but people in the future will now have some kind of answer if they're ever in a similar situation. I'm glad to have provided the details to futue VJers in the event they find themselves in this situation.

Sorry to necro this old thread, today 1/16/2023 I received a case update that our case has been sent to the State Department (NVC) for visa processing. It took just over 3 years, with the major delay being that my case was a possible candidate for AWA and sent to the Vermont Service Center. Turns out it was not so they proceeded with the approval. My timeline says my noa1 was in 2022, when I tried to update my noa2, it gave me errors saying that the time between them is too long lol. Any mods reading this, is there any way I can fix this properly?

CASE UPDATE!

Today, January 16 2023 I received a case update that the petition has been sent to the Department of State for visa processing.

This can only mean the petition was approved and is being sent to NVC for processing.

8 hours ago, Genesisfan said:

Can you recall if his case is AWA? Was their case approved after providing documents? What did the docs indicate?

sincerely

I was referring to this comment on this thread

\/\/\/\/\/

On 8/13/2020 at 10:19 PM, Sandyl said:

Our case was transferred to Vermont. My husband had something when he was a juvenile and its completely gone now. We filed without an attorney and we filed in 2016. Shortly after it got transferred to Vermont and we didn't hear anything until April of 2018, my husband had to go in for biometrics due to that. He went and in December 2018 we got an Intent to Deny because it was unclear if it was AWA. We had to provide them with all of the documents, documents from family saying there is no risk and such. We went to the KBI to get his record, he took finger prints and it came back as this person has NO criminal record. In July of 2019 we finally heard it was approved but I think ours was different because he was not under AWA and it doesn't show up anymore when asking for records. He was also a juvenile so "lucky" in that way.
For us, there was nothing because we simply didn't file the right forms/ right explanation or anything, we just added the forms from his PO and not even all of them. But I would highly suggest in your case to do this with an attorney. It's expensive but we waited about 3 years for my K1 to get approved.

 

If you are really AWA its probably going to be a long and expensive process. 

 

As @Villanelle said, she needs to know everything. I had to tell exactly what did happen at my K1 interview. I knew everything and read everything since I was visiting during the Intent to Deny but they will ask.

 

10 minutes ago, TBoneTX said:

That's good news.  The website has improved over the years but may still lag.

Yeah It seems so, basically after the biometrics it may take until the end of the year for another response, which may either be an approval or a NOID depending on whether they can determine with absolute certainty that this is not AWA. I was looking at a comment from a while back on this thread that is very similar to my timeline now. Her husband got the bio appt in April, the following December they got the NOID, but after providing all documents they were eventually approved. Of course I don't expect my case to go exactly like that, as all cases are different. But this just tells me that after the biometrics, next time we hear back is going to be the major decision.

I have an actual update, today I received a letter in the mail from USCIS calling me in to a local office for bio-metrics in mid-april. There wasn't anything posted about it on the case status on the website though. This came a few weeks after I once again made a request for "case outside of normal processing times" earlier this month. I wonder if me doing that is basically pushing them to move along, basically like a "bump". Anyway, I hope this is a good sign. I'm actually going to go visit my fiancee again soon on April 24 so good thing this appointment is before that.

A small update here,

I have made 2 requests this year for "case outside processing times", first one was in July and their response was that they were waiting on background checks. I just made another request a few days ago and the response this time was just that it requires additional review before making a decision and that they cannot say how long it will take.

So on the bright side it has moved forward from the background check phase, but of course we won't know how long it's going to take for them to adjudicate the case. Additionally on the bright side I was able to finally visit my fiancee for three weeks after almost two years of not being able to because of covid, and I have another trip planned for April, which I hope is not disrupted because of omicron.

2 minutes ago, Jorgedig said:

VSC does not process routine I129Fs. All 129Fs are processed at the CSC, with the exception of a small handful that need additional vetting, generally due to the petitioner's criminal background.  There are VJ members who have had petitions stuck there for years.

Well you can add us to that list, our petition was transferred there September 2020. I was just curious why k1 USED to show up when you looked at their processing times but now it only shows k3/k4.

I have had my k1 application at the VSC for the past year, I had been checking the processing times there every now and then but last time I checked they are only showing k3/k4 time estimates. They used to have k1 estimates as well. I did a search here and found a comment on a thread that said VSC stopped processing k1 applications a few months ago. I tried searching and did not see any official information on this. I was on the phone with a USCIS agent earlier and they said that my case was still pending security checks at the VSC.

Does anyone have this information about VSC not processing K1 applications at all? Please let me know if there is anything I should know with regards to the VSC  and their processing of k1 applications.

Quick update, finally after 7 months the case status has been updated once again since it was transferred to Vermont. It now says, "Correspondence Was Received And USCIS Is Reviewing It".

I got in touch with my lawyer, who had sent the USCIS a legal memorandum that details my situation does not apply to the AWA guidelines. Lawyer says this is good news and that the USCIS has received the legal memorandum along with the G-28 form.

My assumption is that the case Update means that someone at the service center has finally got around to looking at our case, which if true, is fantastic news. Hoping for some even better news soon.

2 hours ago, Aquino Burns said:

I am in this situation right now. The attorney I was using was not experienced in awa and my wife and I was denied. There were even a couple of things said to be contradicting in their letter. Now we are searching for a awa lawyer that get us out of this situation. Does any one know a particular law firm that has had success with this kind of case? My wife and I have 2 baby girls and cannot break up this way. 

You should read through this whole thread.

Little update, the attorney reviewed my case, went over the police report and wanted to speak with me. Over the phone they said that my arrests will not fall under awa, and that their plan is to send the Vermont service center a legal memorandum as soon as possible so they get it before vsc decides to send a noid. According to the attorney, this should trigger them to approve the case and have it move forward.

They are also going to be preparing my fiancée with a packet to bring to her interview when we get to that stage.

All in all, we are ecstatic to hear this news, and hoping that we still have a chance at this.

4 hours ago, Genesisfan said:

You mean ”keep us updated?”

So your case got transferred nearly 15 months ago and you have not received any correspondence at all from Vermont Service Center?

Got an update, I spoke on the phone with the attorney for about an hour. We're thinking we can win this one and we have many ways we can back it up. I decided to go ahead and retain them, I will be signing the contract on Monday. It's not too expensive, $3700 for the waiver, and if we have to appeal, an additional 1500-2000$.

We will start early preparing the waiver so that when we receive the noid from vsc, we will be ready to respond.

2 hours ago, Villanelle said:

I also wanted to drop this link for you- https://fightawa.org/uscis-awa-decision-pdf-files It is an attnys website that does advertise their services but it also provides a lot of information on various aspects of the process. If you havent checked it out I strongly suggest you do. You may even want to contact the attny as it says they will do a free case assessment.  . 

Appreciate your responses, very helpful. I just sent the attorney an email.

19 minutes ago, Lemonslice said:

Usually, it is AWA, or not.  What would be "borderline AWA"?

what I mean by that is the possibility that the new adjudicator at vsc may determine that my crime does not fall under AWA due to certain specifics of the law. One standout being the 4 year age gap. My case was 17 v 14. We are thinking that maybe the adjudicator in California just doesn't have the experience to determine whether it is AWA, I mean they don't deal with these cases, they send them out to vsc. So we let the specialists at vsc who are more versed in the specifics of AWA determine whether my crime falls under it or not.

19 minutes ago, evli1966 said:

They did a RFE in the first 4 months and we had like 30 days th to respond this included the waiver request. Then biometrics at 7 months then we received Intent to deny after a few years then we appealed. More Biometrics and another RFE then we were approved in 2016. 

There is no transparency no consistency except if you make 1 mistake in the filing you will get bounced.

Thanks for the info... What you two have been through is so unfair but I'm glad you're together now. I don't know if her and I can do the same. we're both almost 30, plan on having kids...

We've already talked about plan B, she's a Filipino working in Qatar and I could easily move to her. But we just don't want to give up plan A until we know for sure if it's AWA.