grant2

My understanding is there's only ever 0 or 1 interviews for a I-130 + I-485. Random comments have said they're typically approved (or denied) at the same time but apparently in this era they seem to split them up, much like the I-765 + I-131 gets split up. (my I-765 approved a year ago, I-131 still 'received' status)

If you can fill out the rest of the forms, then the I-765 is no problem. if you're truly "not good" then get help. even if beneficiary has no plans to get a job, how about: a) Want a SSN for bank accounts / loans / health care / etc. etc.? Hard or impossible to get without worth authorization. b) Want a driver's license? EAD can be very helpful. c) Want to help your friend's business? Paint the house you own & rent out? technically, might need an EAD. d) Bored and want to start working part time for a hobby? Need an EAD. e) Want to be prepared in case petitioner loses their job and you have to work? EAD also needed. It's reckless to be lazy on a 15 minute form when the risk is you're locked out of so much of american life for an extra 6+ months because you realized too late you actually have a use for work auth.

Lots of peopleare getting their interviews waived. My friends nearby got green card a few months ago with no interview

Ok good to know. I thought the decision about a bona-fide marriage was made as part of the I-130, but it seems it's made as part of the I-485.

Filed in July 2022. submitted no evidence of marriage besides the marriage certificate. I-130 petition was recently approved at the local field office (Chatsworth, CA). My I-485 adjustment-of-status is now "RFE" for medical exam. Does this mean there will not be an interview? Or do I-485 sometimes still get an interview even after I-130 is approved?

A bit of a detour btw: "pre-nup" isn't all about "how do we split assets in divorce". it's also about "how do we agree to do things during marriage". My pre-nup discusses contributions to shared expenses. A friend's pre-nup says they must always live within 6 miles of a beach.

USCIS agents can think anything is or isn't fishy, that's out of your control. You can only control your actions. It's no secret that many I-485 applicants will research what USCIS agents care about, simply for performance to get approved. That doesn't change the fact that bona-fide spouses also do them for legitimate reasons. If you and your spouse plan to open a joint account, then just do it. Sooner is always better. Why wait?

How about printouts from your employment benefits / life insurance / retirement accounts listing each other as beneficiaries? Also it's better late than never to get a joint bank account and a joint credit card. I assume you don't have a prenup agreement, but if you did, I'd expect it's actually helpful to prove your entered marriage with serious intention.

What statuses are showing on the USCIS web portal for your I-130 & I-485?

There's only about half as many I-485 applications for the same cohort as I-130 applications. These are only IOE records though. I have the notion that relative petitions tend to get scanned into the IOE queue by default whereas some other forms (like I-140) seem to still be paper-only and listed under the various offices. We can see from the large blob of yellow on the right that most I-485 applications were instantly put in "Processing" status, and have been gradually approved (or rejected) going back in time. We can also see that in the past month, an extraordinary number were immediately put into "Interview Scheduled"

I'm being sponsored by a relative petitioner, as I expect most of the people on here are. Since the I-130 must be approved before the I-485 can be granted, it seems more relevant. I suspect most people's I-485 is in "processing" status, like mine, while they wait for adjudication of the related I-130. After an I-130 approval, I'd expect the I-485 approval will happen promptly & automatically shortly after.

58% of applicants in my cohort are now approved- it passed the magical 10,000 number! The "processing" queue has falling from 6,000 -> 5,400. Only 7% of applicants are still in "received" status (including me) as we continue to sit in that long, thing blue tail of very-long-processing-times.

I just passed 1 year and same for me: "Application received". My cohort (IOE-09-168) has 17,437 I-130 applications. We can see that 89% of those have advanced to at least "Processing" status which means you & I are in the ~10%-15% of applicants stuck in "Received". On the other side, almost 50% have resolved all the way to Approved / Denied / Rejected. The "Received" group shrinks by about 10/day. As you can see from the graph, all of the cohorts stretching back a full year have some tiny portion still in that blue status, so it seems like a matter of slowly-increasing-luck as to when our number is called.

Next week I expect the 168s I-130s to start getting a lot more approvals https://www.casestatusext.com/approvals/I-130/IOE-LB

Congrats both of you. Looking at the stats on casestatusext.com it looks like the 09-162 cases are starting to get a lot more processing. The earliest june 2022 filers should be starting with 09-167, I think. So in a few weeks i think there will be an uptick in this group getting approvals

I believe they are assigned in order. If you watch casestatusext.com for any length of time, you can see that the newest cases appear with the highest numbers. (we know they are new, because they did not exist at all the previous week or previous month). My cases are 09-168. I expect all of us July filers who got an IOE number are all somewhere between 09-166 and 09-170. There are no increases in the total cases for the older numbers on that website. Over time, however, you can see the statuses change (i.e., cases go from "received" into "approved" or "denied". e.g., 09-168 has always had ~17,000 total The processing EAD is mostly random. Check out hilites on any day and you'll see that the list of "today's updates" are all over the place. The only pattern i've seen is that large groups from the same block will get processed on the same day. E.g., on a day with 1500 EAD approvals, you might have 1000 from 09-184, and the other 500 are scattered all over. Unfortunately for us, the 'big block' approval groups most frequently land on 09-175 and higher. Although mine DID get approved on one of the rare days that 09-168 got about 600 approvals in a single day.

the processing order for EADs seems random. Some get them in 14 days, others still waiting after 14 months

Yes! My card arrived in the mail about a week after it was approved

my lawyer said many, many GC cases are being approved without interview. Not to mention the many people on forums saying so.

the CaseStatusExt site is just a few months old. I think its IOE data never included cases which were "approved" before the site was created, which is why the older #s have much lower totals. But now those cases are "remembered" and slowly change status on the site. In time the site should have extremely accurate IOE data. For now I found it mostly useful to just watch the daily changes in my cohort (and other cohorts). What it showed is that for several months, the processing was done very randomly across every cohort, + a lot of approvals happening in the 09-175 and higher cohorts. This is the opposite of what most people expect. This total randomness is of course frustrating for all the people in old cohorts who have been waiting a very long time, and see that most of the people getting approved applied many months after them. There is speculation that the processing order is somehow being chosen for the purpose of improving USCIS's statistics. e.g., if the newest applications are most of the approvals, then the "80% are processed within..." statistic suddenly gets a low number.

https://www.casestatusext.com/forms/I-765/IOE-LB https://hilites.today/

the 09-168 EAD group started moving really fast the past few days, according to other trackers. I just got "card being produced" on my case. I'm in Los Angeles - California. NOA date = July 7, 2022 EAD approved = January 3, 2023

I believe the basic reason is the major canadian banks also do a lot of business in the USA so they are extra vigilant to ensure they're reporting correctly on US persons.

No news except we keep waiting. My case #s are 09-168xxxxx and that group seems to be getting very few approvals compared to the cases in the 170-180 range.

Obviously having a US bank is great for doing living in the USA. But having canadian bank accounts is also useful for any stuff you do in Canada. If you visit there, own properties there, etc.