xxlian

That's not all they did. They also added an "posts are authorized to give K visa cases high priority" statement.

Where have you heard about Poland?

You're right. I was thinking of the USCIS status that I have seen that say "Case was rejected because I did not sign my form," which is different than a denial. Thanks for clearing this up. I'll withhold my comments on posts from now on.

They can deny for something as simple as not signing your form. There isn't much you can do until you find out why.

She will need one from each country she lived in for more than 6 months.

You can follow this link and click under Police, Court, Prison Records to find country-specific ways of getting what she'll need: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country/SouthKorea.html

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services today announced that the agency will avert an administrative furlough of more than 13,000 employees, scheduled to begin Aug. 30 as a result of unprecedented spending cuts and a steady increase in daily incoming revenue and receipts. Source: https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-averts-furlough-of-nearly-70-of-workforce

I can't see why it would slow down the process. Make sure you change your address online as soon as you can. According to your timeline, you're still months out from your NOA2, so you should be fine.

Multiple people have already given you clear answers to your question, yet you're still asking it. Hence my reaction to your post.

It's very frustrating, but it's not really an "empty gesture" any more than the bill that they passed just before this one to prevent cutbacks at USPS. It's just the very first step in getting the bill passed. The Senate will be back in two weeks, and it's likely that the bill will be passed then. Having the House finally pass this bill should encourage USCIS leaders to stop the furloughs, but we'll see...

If it helps at all, if you traveled through ORD (Chicago International Airport), "CHI" probably refers to Chicago.

They introduced a bill yesterday to try and stop the furloughs. I'm not sure how likely it is that this one will be passed or how long that would take. https://lofgren.house.gov/media/press-releases/bipartisan-house-members-introduce-emergency-stopgap-bill-prevent-uscis

Yes, that is your NOA1. The receipt number is all you need for now. It will be a letter. If you completed the G-1145 (E-Notification of Application/Petition Acceptance), then you will probably (though not always) get a text message as well.

The phases are supposedly determined by each embassy's local conditions (of the virus) at the time.

I don't, so I'm not sure if they had an emergency appointment or not, but still, they issued one after not issuing any for months in a row, so I got a little excited. You can find the info on July's monthly nonimmigrant visa issuance statistics listed here by country: https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Statistics/Non-Immigrant-Statistics/MonthlyNIVIssuances/JULY 2020 - NIV Issuances by Nationality and Visa Class.pdf