AmyStan

Linda, this is one situation where it would have been better not to receive the email since the snail mail will explain it and all you can do is worry and speculate as to why. But try to remember that you have a lot of resources here in VJ that can assist you. The wealth of knowledge here is remarkable and I have to believe that whatever the reason for the denial, it can be worked through.

Stay strong and lean on us. Your journey will continue and we'll be there with you.

Hi VJers,

I want to share the good news. I got an email last night from USCIS stating "my approval notice was sent on 3 Aug 09" Waooooooooooooo Hoooooooooo. I am so excited and so will my future wife when I call to tell her the good news. I recieved my NOA1 on 6 March 2009. Good Luck to all March filers who are still waiting and God Bless!!!

Congrats! Please remember to update your timeline and best of luck with the rest of the journey!

STAN? I think you forgot the sprinkler!!!!! Bad Stan... Bad

Hey, I came up with a song. A man can only do so much.

Where's Missy? We need to hear that she's okay; that she's back on her feet (even if she doesn't want to get out of bed).

sera gente...........congrats to the 2 approved today.....i keep checking for a TOUCH but nothing yet,,,keep singing to myself songs with the word TOUCH ........like TOUCH ME IN THE MORNINGGGGGGGGGGGG, what else??

How about Gary Allan - "The One" - No rush..Though I need your touch....

On second thought, "no rush" is what we've been experiencing from VSC for months.

After having no 'action' every time I go to USCIS to check our update, we had a touch on July 28th. I am praying we get our NOA-2 soon. Did they only finally just now look at our application after all these months? Just so crazy.... happy to hear others have gotten theirs, hope we are next!!!!

A touch can be a very good sign. Some have had a touch before getting the NOA2 and it is believed it can happen when they "scan" the box to take it to their desk. Here's hoping!

Did any others with a recent approval have a touch before the NOA2?

March filers are starting to get approved? Great. I'd check my online status but the coffee doesn't seem to be working today.

Thanks, my gut tells me the same thing. I get annoyed when people whine that after waiting for 2-3 months they haven't heard anything. We all know that 5 months is the best we can hope for. So 6 is more realistic. I'll sit tight. I'm a bit worried that mine will take longer than usual because there is extra stuff in it. My attorney instructed us to include stuff we won't need til the interview in the original package -- only after we sent it did I find out through these forums that we didn't need that stuff right away. I'm particularly mad at her because she wouldn't file our petition until we had everything, and the police certificates took months to get. We could have filed back in October without them. So after waiting ages to file, now we have to get more police certificates because the ones in our package will be too old. And for this I paid THOUSANDS of dollars! I work for a non-profit, so you can imagine how upset I have been. Ron tell me not to worry, it's in the past...but I'm still annoyed. If I've learned anything from this process, it's to do my own research! Wow I've been waiting months to say that. It's good to vent to people who understand!

-Jody

We do understand, Jody - we do, we do, we do. Hang in there - things are happening.

At the risk of getting a virtual flogging, this is really all my fault. As I mentioned earlier, we've been experiencing a drought - not one like Richard had (5 years??? - wow), but my poor lawn has suffered as a result. This morning I woke up early to turn on my sprinkler system so it would be reasonably dry before the "water restriction gestapo" made the rounds. It was about half way through the stations when it started pouring down rain. Now that it's raining, the NOA2's are flowing.

So if I had turned on my sprinklers sooner, we'd all be discussing interviews. Sorry guys..........

I am at work now and just received an email from USCIS...We have received our approval. I just called Alicia and woke her up in the middle of the night to share the news...I am not cruel, I warned her no matter what time when I found out that she would be the first person I called.

Pop Pop Fizz Fizz Oh what a relief it is.

It appears that the March Petitions are starting to roll out...To my fellow March Petitioners......Soon and Very Soon.

I thank God for bringing Alica and I together and I give thanks to God for continuing to watch over the process.

Karl and Alicia

That's great! When I get the news, Amy would kill me if I didn't wake her up. Congrats Karl and Alicia! Keep us updated on how things go from here.

Hello all,

I have been reading this thread for months and have finally decided to speak up. As if somehow keeping quiet meant that I could be patient... :-) My NOA1 date is 3/5/09. Seeing a 3/17 get their NOA2 makes me both happy and jealous -- I wish it really were first come first served! I can't decide whether to get my congressman involved after 5 months have passed, or 6 months...it will be 5 months in just a few days. I don't want to make things go slower...I imagine that getting politicians involved just causes things to move slower at VSC. Any thoughts? How long do you plan to wait before you get worried? After 5 months of being patient, at what point is it OK to be worried?

Hi Missing_Ron. Just my opinion here, but I plan on waiting until my case is clearly left behind and the majority of others are processed. These tend to be completed in batches and reports are that the adjudicators get them in "boxes" and that would explain why. So if whoever had the March 17 box worked from the top to the bottom of the box, the older one would be on top since it was put there last.

That said, I don't know that getting a congressman involved would slow things down. But from what I have read, it can often result in more frustration when they only get the standard response from USCIS - basically what you can read in the website. I might go off on someone if that happens. So for me, waiting until that amount of ranting is merited is what I plan on doing.

Hope you get yours soon and I think that's entirely possible.

Good morning everyone. The thread was on the bottom of the second page. What's up with that? This is where everything should be happening. Finally raining here in Central Texas and we've been needing it for a long, long time. Maybe it's a good sign of things to come today.

Miss Missy is missing Mississippi? I must say, when you call in sick from work, you really know how to do it. I hope you feel completely better soon!!

i saw also someone that sent in their package 2/14, NOA1 was received 3/26 and received thier NOA2 ,,,,seems like they must look at the day the package was mailed also,,what do you think???

I don't believe they care about the date it was sent. The above dates don't look accurate to me - it would mean the NOA2 was issued 5 weeks after it was sent. I imagine it's a typo, but there's no way of knowing which date (sent or NOA1) is in error.

The Berkeley list is sorted in order of date sent, but again, I don't see how that matters since they receive them, log them, and put them in a box. They only care about when they receive it.

We've had good news so far this week and here's hoping it continues. Amazing what 5-6 approvals can do for our mood. Finally saw our anticipated date move up instead of back for a change. First time that's happened in over a month.

Congrats to everyone who received it and for those of us waiting, it shouldn't be long now.

Congrats! Hope the rest of the journey is smooth and fast.

I've tracked a few Igor list numbers based on NOA2 receipt. The Berkeley list number has been anywhere from 44 to 106 at the time of NOA2. The VJ number has been anywhere from 132 to 185 at the time the NOA2 was received. Again, this is just on ones I've been able to track and I don't know of a range overall.

Good to see the approvals! Here's hoping it's only the beginning.

I agree with what has been said. I don't follow K3's and others, but seems like a lot of those have been approved recently. It could be that they're going through different categories and cleaning up older ones in order to meet processing goals. It's all speculation since there's no visibility into the system.

Once they move to the K1's, March filers will be up and approvals should be flying. I really, really hope that this week is the week.

I remember when I first came here that people told me besides the useful information, people at VJ are the biggest bunch of whiners of all the visa hunters.

Whenever someone tells you to stop whining, or "just deal with it," try this - click over their user name, go to Find Member Posts. It will take a few, but once it comes up, go to the end (the first page will be the latest posts, you want to see the older ones). See what they were saying when they were in the same timeframe. Always hilarious.

I have concluded that this must be similar to childbirth. You must get a huge rush of endorphins after the NOA2 that make you forget that you were very recently going out of your mind and begging for pain killers.

I just got approved today, so it seems they are moving!!

Congrats!

We were so happy to get a touch last week, so surprised. Before that I was fine with waiting and my girl said nary a thing since we have been apart more than a year already. But since then I have been crawling the walls. My girl? I told her it was driving me crazy and she said "Why? We can do nothing but wait." The air went right out of my tension. She was right, we can do nothing but wait, and crawling the walls wastes energy. Gotta love the Chinese who understand the concept of SLOWLY in a civilization 5000 years old.

but yeah, VSC sucks

Glad to hear your SO is holding up. Amy was the same for much of this. She was the one to calm me down. Only recently have the roles reversed. As in any relationship, one has to step up to help the other through certain struggles. It's my turn and I certainly don't mind. But it would sure help if VSC gave some approvals so I had some objective data to back up my subjective statements.

Most would say "obsessed" but I like your description much mo bettah. Thanks, Richard.

Amy has been in tears the last several days. She sees our timeline getting pushed farther and farther back and just sees no end to it. I've tried to explain that we're close and it won't be much longer. Now if I could only convince myself. But there's no "give-up" in her and she'll be okay. I think we all could use some good news soon.

They can't hold the petitions forever. And once they start back up, we're on deck (if not in the batter's box).

One reported March filer with an NOA1 of 3/3 received NOA2 on 7/1 according to the below link. Since then, nothing. We're expecting that March will be a large number of the approvals once they start up again. But they still need to finish about 30% of Feb, not to mention some still waiting from Dec and Jan. It has been very slow the last few weeks.

http://www.visajourney.com/timeline/monthl...=1&sortby=2

I hope you get a better response than I did, Michele. The canned response I received is below.

Dear Sir/Madam:

Thank you for contacting the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman (CISOMB) in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Under the authority of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the CIS Ombudsman assists individuals and employers who experience specific problems during the USCIS benefits seeking process, largely to identify problems and to formulate recommendations to improve the USCIS service.

We believe that first hand information from individuals like you is the best source for identifying systemic problems in the immigration benefits process. Our office will consider the information you provided as we develop recommendations to improve USCIS’ practices and procedures.

Thank you for contacting our office.

Sincerely,

CIS Ombudsman

Hey everyone!! What have I missed???? I realized yesterday that I might be a little addicted to you guys and checking in here all of the time! Arrived safely and having a wonderful time so far. I can't describe how wonderful and reassuring it was to see Lars again and be back in his arms. Hope the March approvals start arriving soon! Love to all!!!

Thanks for the update, Missy. You haven't missed any news on here - things are at a standstill for the most part. They must know you're out of the country and so are goofing off. Tell Lars he has a lot of friends here that he might not have known about. Enjoy your visit!!!

Doesn't seem like much happened today. I think my position on Igor's list actually went UP rather than down, lol! Maybe in the next few days a HUGE wave will come through for us. There is positive news ahead, there has to be It'll all work out, it's just that the waiting with no news whatsoever is pretty rough. Staying busy is key atm. I was hoping to receive the NOA2 by the end of the month, and there's still a chance, but I've pretty much accepted that august is more likely now...

My number went up as well. Not to worry. Feb filers have been over 60% for a couple of weeks now, so it seems like March should have started already. But there's been a slowdown for some reason. Once they start back up, we should see a lot of March approvals. Hang in there. We're talking weeks now instead of months.

My god man, you have been waiting for 3 months and your outraged? My wife and I have been waiting since April 2008 for our NOA2. I have wrote letters to both Bush and Obama. I also contacted my old boss Michael Hayden for help. I have called the USCIS so many times I think I own stock in Verizon now. I have contacted my local Congressman on many occasions and all I ever hear is I am stuck in a FBI background check and as soon as I am cleared then we may proceed to the next phase. I guess this is what I get for 30 years of service to the US Goverment. Get a grip.

I must say, you sound pretty "outraged" to me, and deservedly so. Is there a time-limit as to when you can feel this way - a mark in the sand that once you cross, you're no longer walking in sunlight and are now in the dark? If so, please list this in the user guide so the rest of us will know when we've earned the right to be indignant.

I wrote the ombudsman office and received a form letter for my effort. I have it framed next to my toilet with instructions "In case of emergency, break glass."

While it's true that things probably won't change through anything we attempt, it is most definitely true that things won't change if we do nothing. Behavior only changes when enough force is applied. I don't know if we have enough force, but I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from trying.

Have a safe trip and a wonderful time, Missy!