tkyang99

It's possible that if we didn't say anything we would have gotten approved on the spot. But like others have mentioned, and also our attorney warned us, we are taking a risk which can affect things down the road. We just wanted to play things as safe as possible. We're not in a gigantic hurry to get the GC, as long as we can get it.

I don't want to give my attorney that much credit lol, she actually recommended from the start that we re-apply for the I-131 when she found out what happened...then later on when my wife successfully returned, she said we should cancel the first AOS and refile a new one, but I just told my attorney, don't do anything, and I filed a new AOS myself. But I can't really blame her too much, since she is SUPPOSED to follow the law to the letter. Yeah numerous phone calls, online requests, even contacted my Ombudsman...but I think none of that made any difference, it was winter 2020 the height of Covid and there was an enormous backlog at the time.

Hi yes, so wow it's been a while, but yes my wife did eventually get her AP after about 11 months, I mailed her the AP and she used it to come back, there were no issues and no questions at the port of entry (SFO). So afterwards, we double checked with our lawyer, and her recommendation was that we re-file our AOS, because technically, the original AOS is considered abandoned. On the safe side, we filed a new AOS so we had 2 AOS applications active at the same time. When the time came for the interview (this was about 4 months ago), our lawyer recommended to be completely truthful and tell them exactly what happened. So we told them about her leaving the country without the AP, and explained why we had 2 active applications, etc. So the interviewer agreed that the original AOS should be considered abandoned, but he said he can still do the interview for us (so the interview would actually apply to the 2nd AOS, even though that one is still going through the process). He said once the 2nd AOS reaches the local USCIS office, hopefully he can just apply the interview to that one, and not have to do a 2nd interview. So that's where we are now, just waiting for the results of the interview. Bottom line is it became quite messy, but I think in the end we did the right thing and tried to be honest and transparent to USCIS throughout the whole process.