k0nstantin

You could try searching for timelines with Ciudad Juarez as the interview location. Timeline search result page is not very usable though. Outside of VJ, Reddit sometimes has helpful info, as well as this discord: "discord dot gg/PYWbmkdu" (you'll need to fix the URL, VJ seems to resist posting external links)

NVC publishes their case review time online, and it's pretty accurate: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/immigrate/nvc-timeframes.html

Not quite an RFE, but something that caused time to be wasted: at the NVC stage my wife used the "Ask NVC" form to request a transfer to a different embassy because she had moved to a different country. She attached documentation to prove she's in the new country legally. NVC replied that they needed her new address to update the case. She had provided her new address in DS-260, but they didn't care, it had to be included in the message sent through "Ask NVC".

I didn't get one personally, but from what I heard they should upload it to your account.

You should get an e-mail that says "We have taken an action on your case". You can ignore My Progress, it is truly meaningless.

The reason why K3s may be speeding up I-130 could be the same reason why K1s are now approved in just 6 months. I strongly suspect that it has to do with how USCIS management measures their performance. Someone at USCIS wants to tell their boss that "progress has been made with getting the wait times under control" and "we now have X out of Y visa categories that have reasonable wait times". CR1 is likely the most numerous category, and it's being sacrificed because there's just no hope of getting it under control without hiring more people. Hiring more people is unpopular with politicians right now, so we can expect CR1 to fall farther and farther behind as other categories are prioritized.

A year ago I'd agree that K3 didn't affect anything, but these days I see cases with a K3 application getting approved as early as 6 months after filing the K3. They still obviously don't issue K3 visas, but now I find it more plausible that a K3 application may affect how fast the I-130 is approved.

This is faster than normal by about a month. Did you also apply for a K3?

It looks like the March AOS cases are now running out. Also processing speed has been going up since March. Some back of the envelope calculations show that if USCIS keeps their pace in September, then they'll be approving cases from September 2023 in October 2024, and not in November like VJ predicts. Fingers crossed!

The reality is a bit more nuanced than "processing times have slowed". Like most people here I don't know exactly how USCIS works, but I think I have a pretty good guess: When an I-130 is filed, it is put into one of two queues: queue one for adjustment of status and queue two for consular processing. These are nationwide queues, i.e. it doesn't matter anymore which service center your case is assigned to. When it's your turn, your case gets automatically assigned to the next available agent regardless of where that agent works. So the fact that you're assigned to Texas doesn't mean anything, you'll just get reassigned when it's your turn. Petitions from the AOS queue start to be processed after a couple of months from filing. How long an AOS petition has to wait in the queue seems to be random, but could in fact be determined by USCIS using some characteristics of the petition. On the other hand, the consular processing queue is a true queue: first in - first out. A petition in this queue is never processed before any petition that was filed earlier, including the AOS petitions. Thus any consular processing petition is considered after all of the earlier consular processing petitions, all of the earlier AOS petitions and some of the later AOS petitions. In April of 2024 USCIS increased its filing fee by about $100. This caused a huge spike in the number of applications in March. The number of applications doubled compared to the average. Work on AOS petitions from the March batch has already started, and they are substantially slowing down work on consular petitions. The other reason, although a much less significant one, is prioritization of I-129F (K-1) petitions. These used to take about a year to process in 2023, but now they only take 3-6 months. These are likely prioritized because there are much fewer of them and they are much easier to take under control, which looks good in a report to agency's bosses. This is based on various forum posts and statistics published here.