Carlos.Brazil

I've been keeping my eye on this portable 12v fridge to plug into the car on road trips or when going camping....I'm waiting for black Friday but right now its the cheapest I've seen it....so tempting! https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08295YLYW/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

@Boiler Yes, but we are in a similar case as @Yorkie62 posted above. (Also @Jorgedig, hope this makes sense to you)

Thank you @OldUser, I appreciate it. That's what I've been seeing as well unfortunately, we might have to try and do Emergency Advanced Parole depending on how his health progresses these coming days. I guess my main question was if the first expedite request would just get cancelled out if I create a new expedite request, or if they would both be technically "Active"?

I appreciate your remarks, nobody thinks "Today" when they are expediting. It does say I should hear a response after about 7 days though, that's why I was wondering since its been about 2 weeks. Like I said, situation just happened to change. Thanks for the input though I guess

Hello, I was wondering if anybody has had a similar situation where they had submitted an expedite request a few weeks ago and they haven't heard back from yet. However, some new developments came up during our waiting for this expedite with the health of a grandparent that is not able to undergo surgery and has limited time left. The first expedite was for financial loss, but since we haven't heard back anything in 2 weeks, I was wondering if we could submit another expedite for Humanitarian reasons while the 1st one is still active? Or do we have to wait until we hear back from the other one and wait 5 days if denied before applying again?

Yes, there will be two different accounts, 1 for the petitioner (I-130) and one for the beneficiary (I-485, I-131, I-765)

I'm curious to know as well, the way people on here talk about it, they make it seem like its a done deal once they bring out the congressman/Senator statement😅

Haha aw man, this phrase was used way too often... Somebody brings up a good idea, the response: "No, that makes too much sense, lets keep doing it the old deprecated way"😆

Apparently you can go back as far as 14 days, and I haven't seen any updates on the IOE cases for the I-131....which seems to be going along with the processing times getting pushed back on VisaJourney as well. At some point they were processing around February then it slumped back to December.

I haven't seen anyone mention this website, but I stumbled upon it on a Reddit post yesterday when somebody posted all the approved I-485 cases in the past day (Many of them were filed in March and July of THIS year!) You can also see other case types like I-131 and I-765. Apparently the average was about 10-15 approvals for the I-765 per day, but a few days ago, there were over 200 in a single day approved! (At least for cases starting in "IOE") It seems a lot of people use the case numbers of the recently approved ones to see if their own cases are pretty close. For example, there were a lot of IOE09157xxxxx that were approved and apparently those were filed between March and July of 2022. Of course there is no way to know how USCIS is knocking these out, so there's no use in using this as a reference. Here is the website and a screenshot: https://hilites.today/ You can click on the numbers to see a list of the case numbers. I'm not sure how to get to this "hourly I-485 updates" on the menu, so here is the direct link and a picture of what that looks like: https://hilites.today/hourly And here is the reddit post I was talking about:

My wife is going through something similar right now, she was a Portuguese Teacher in Brazil and just landed a position at Amazon as a "Machine Learning Data Linguist" for various foreign languages that she speaks. It all started when she said she wanted to keep using her Master's degree in linguistics and keep using her native language (But she didn't want to continue being a teacher) and that's when she found out about Natural Language Processing (NLP), which would mix IT and her Linguistic Background. At first, she started studying how to code with Python and signed up on Coursera to take the "Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate" course, but decided she wanted to work more with language itself and not a ton of technical stuff yet. I'd recommend for anybody on here (Since almost everybody is from a different country, and they know a language(s) other than English) to use this to their advantage! Find a niche field that requires you to be proficient in the language you know and work towards that. For example, their are many Data analyst positions in the US, but some require you to collect, organize, sort, etc. data in a different language, that's where you come in! And if you have zero experience or don't have any technical skills at all, you can take those Google Professional Certificates on Coursera to get you started and put on your resume.

Okay so to update incase somebody has similar questions in the future. Since my wife is over 25, she did not have to do the drivers education course (Although, they do recommend you do it to learn the laws here in the US). For clarification, this is the 6 hour online course you can take that consists of videos with an exam at the end (And this exam counts as the one you would have to take at DPS, getting you your ADE-1317 Certificate). The you have to watch a 2nd course online (IMPACT Texas Adult Drivers) which is just a 1 or 2 hour long video and you print a certificate from that once you finish watching it. Now comes the confusing part. We had already scheduled a road test online at DPS, but I called and they said we had to set up an appointment for a "First Time DL" first so that they could process all the paperwork AND THEN I could schedule a road test. I asked if they could process the paperwork on my road test appointment but they said no, so we cancelled that road test and scheduled for a first time DL. We were going to use her Receipt of Notice for her I-485 to show lawful presence, but her EAD and Social Security Card came, so we used those instead, along with 2 utility bills with her name to show she was a resident of Texas. The only problem was that now the road test were booked out for 2 months, so we decided to take the road test with a 3rd party company since we could take it with them that same week instead of waiting 2 months for the DPS road test, so the woman at DPS booked us for a week later to get her Drivers License since we would have the sealed packet with her results from the 3rd party company. NOTE: If you want to use a 3rd party to take the road test, you must first get your permit to take the test with the 3rd Party. When we went to our appointment for the "First Time DL", the DPS lady was processing our paperwork assuming we were going to schedule a road test at DPS 2 months from now, and if you are over 25 years old, you DO NOT need the permit to take your road test at DPS. However, my wife wouldn't be able to drive whatsoever until she took her road test, so I asked about getting a permit and she said it was optional, but we decided to get it so she could still practice driving with me in the passenger seat. (Plus we needed it to take the road test at a 3rd party). Today we showed up for our final appointment with the sealed results of her road test and they gave her a temporary paper drivers license, the card should be coming in the mail in a few weeks. To sum it all up: Online Drivers education course with exam > IMPACT Texas Adult Driver video > Schedule for "First Time DL" (Recommend getting permit here) > Schedule Road test at DPS and get DL OR Take Road test at 3rd Party + Schedule for "Change permit/DL" at DPS to get DL Just wanted to share our experience since I was confused with the process at first, hope it can be helpful to somebody else in the future!

Okay so still a little confused regarding if we have to schedule 2 separate appointments for a permit and road test? From her driving education course, there is this section for getting a DL if you're over 25 years old and it shows this: So it says to just schedule the road test. We have a road test scheduled for Monday, 8/8/2022 and we had scheduled another appointment before for "Applying for a first time DL" on 8/12/2022(This appointment was made before the road test). Would we be able to just show up for the road test, get her permit there if its even necessary, take the hearing and vision exam then the road test? Or should we cancel the road test and just go to the later appointment then schedule another road test after we get her permit. The only problem with that is that the appointments for road tests are booked until October/ November, so not sure if we should just take a chance and go 3 days from now.

Actually, going through the DPS website again and it says people over the age of 25 are not required to take a driver's education course, just to watch the ITD video and print out the certificate you get from that to take your driving test. So where does the permit come from??

@powerpuff Sorry, I never know the perfect place to post, I try to give my best guess😅

@Timona Well she's already taken the drivers course like they said, and I'm assuming with our upcoming appointment, she'll be taking the test for the permit correct? Our appointment was for a "First Time DL" when we made it, so I'm not sure what all else is going to happen.

Hi, I've been going through the forums trying to get an answer and see mix results regarding getting a drivers license in Texas. My wife has her drivers license from Brazil, and we went to DPS where they told us she would have to apply as if she never had a license, which entails taking an adult drivers education course online and then a test to get her permit. This is where I've found mixed information, I see some people just took the driving test and were issued their DL and I see others that had to take the online education course and get a permit first before taking the driving test. My question is how long do we have to wait with the permit to take her driving test if they make us go that route? I see other posts say you could take it the same day after getting your permit too, so would I schedule both for a first time DL and driving test for the same day? We already have an appointment for August 11th, 2022 and she completed the Online Education course, but I'm trying to not go back again if thats possible since appointments are booked almost until next year. Any advice is welcome from those who recently went through this in Texas.🙏

Well we signed up for the "Hiring our Heroes: Career Forward" program for veterans and military spouses, and so far it seems good. They provide a free subscription to Coursera to complete a Google Career Certificate within 6 months, and after you complete it, they push out your profile and resume to partnered companies that are looking for these candidates, some of them big companies like Google, Amazon, etc. The companies partnered with Hiring our Heroes also reach out frequently asking if there are any candidates that recently completed the certificates in ordered to potentially hire them. As you are completing the certificates on your own time, they offer workshops to help you build up your resume, brush up your LinkedIn profile and prepare you for interviews as well. We decided for her to do the "IT Automation with Python Certification" as it would teach her the basics of programming and open up a lot of career paths. Something worth mentioning, since most people here speak foreign languages, you could try looking into the "Data Analytics" Google Career Certificate as there are many positions everywhere (Especially remote ones), and knowing another language could potentially get you a job. For example, if we type in "Portuguese Data" as keywords in a job searching website like Indeed or LinkedIn Jobs, we get a lot of positions for "Brazilian Portuguese Data Linguist", "Data Entry Specialist(Portuguese)", and "Portuguese Data Analyst", all which require a native level speaker of that language and some sort of data analytics experience, which the google career certificate could help you out with. (Most of these jobs pay very well, the average I saw was about $70k-$80K) Even if you can't get into this Hiring our Heroes program, you would only have to pay about $40 per month for a subscription to Coursera and you could potentially finish one of these certificates in about 2 months if you put the time in(About 30 hours a week). For $80 to get upskilled with a certificate in a high paying field along with being a native level speaker in your language, that's a great deal! I will update as we go along in the process.

Thanks everybody! Looks like we can move forward with some of these programs then. I'll check back here to let you guys know how they go and if its something that could be beneficial to others here in the future.

I'm sorry, I'm not sure if my post was unclear but we're not looking to join the military. I served 5 years already so we were looking at programs for military spouses for my wife that would help her get employed, I'm just not sure if there is anything holding us back from using these types of programs since she is pending AOS and has an EAD?

We just got our EAD a few weeks ago and it also doesn't say it serves as AP.

Hello everybody, so I've been skimming the forums regarding studying/going to school while pending AOS and I can't seem to find a clear answer. My wife got her EAD a few weeks ago along with her SSN, so shes been applying to jobs, and we were looking into also trying to get into some military spouse programs like the Hire our Heroes fellowships or career forward programs which help get her employed by getting apprenticeships or certificates. We were also considering some coding bootcamps like code platoon that are offered for free to veterans and their spouses via a scholarship. So now I'm wondering if she's even allowed to do something like this? Its not through an actual university or anything and we don't see anything saying she can't do it. Has anybody been through something like this or have any guidance?

Oh man, I had no idea about them separating the two! I just did some research and it seems that's the case. But it looks like separating them is actually helping speed up EAD approvals as they were hoping to do, at least in some cases. Any word on if this means AP approvals will be delayed? Or average time of approval after these standalone EAD's get approved since they were separated?

You could try finding who the recruiter or hiring manager is for the position you're applying to and let them know your situation. They could possibly get a special application for you or just pass it in the right hands for the time being.

Hi all, So we got our biometrics notice about 2 or 3 weeks ago in the mail and went to the actual appointment yesterday. When we got back home, we checked online to see if there was an update and there was, they had changed the status to "Actively being reviewed by USCIS". The next morning (Today), my wife received an email saying there was an update, and we thought it was the same one we saw yesterday, but when we signed on, it said the card was being produced! We looked at the documents and saw there was the approval notice that was posted yesterday, the same day as our biometrics appointment, saying that we will receive the card in 7-10 days. So now we're wondering if this is a mistake or if anyone has had a similar experience? Mostly asking because our AP status has not changed at all and we filed them together. Or if we'll be receiving two different cards for EAP and AP?