Ryan H

Well stated and agreed.
I'm going to start making use of the 'ignore posts' function. Just tired of seeing the overly dramatic "USCIS is ruining my life!!!" stuff. (I, for one, thank USCIS for working on my petition and allowing me to be with my love later on. Its certainly nice to be able to marry someone of my choosing.)

I'm done trying to reason with you. You're overly dramatic and have ignored everything factual everyone else has contributed. For someone who claims to value a "solid factual foundation" you're ignoring a lot.
Be a conspiracy theorist all you want. Wallow whilst refreshing Igor's List a million times a day all you want. Act like VSC is intentionally out to make you miserable all you want. Positive attitude does not equal happy with the way things are; it means taking the same fragments of information you have and assigning positive intent instead of driving ourselves insane with paranoia about the service center. Complaining and griping on a message board all day is not accomplishing anything; if you really feel that it's that bad and you truly believe that USCIS is deliberately not approving petitions, then either a) move somewhere else or b) go out and do something that may actually make a difference.
But please do not come here and argue with us. You argue every time we're trying to chat and support each other through this and try to steamroll everything we're saying whether there's any logic behind your side of it or not (and there often isn't). We get it. You're choosing to be pessimistic and miserable and obsessive. We aren't. You can have your pity party but stop picking apart everyone else is saying because we don't join in. Accept we feel differently and move on.

False hope?
Get a grip, dude. You're sounding more and more pathetic with every post. Look, we're all in the same boat here. It's not nearly as bad as YOU make YOURSELF think it is. Tomorrow is my 4 month mark since NOA1. One more day, week and month nearer to the day I will be with my second half. We are both staying busy, time is moving quickly, and we are HAPPY. Perhaps you need to make some changes in the way you wait.

Please stop arguing with people. This thread is for support and you are free to vent but it is unhelpful to everyone to deliberately attempt to quash anyone's positivity.
VSC and CSC alternate constantly. It's the way things go. VSC sucks but does not deliberately keep your petition because they hate you and want to make you, personally, suffer. There will be an end to this. We are ALL in the same boat. Driving yourself insane over VSC is not going to change immigration and the way it works. Step back. Try not to come to this website or Igor's List for a few days. Direct your attention elsewhere and give yourself a break from this to work on other things in your life until you are at a point where you can contact USCIS. Having a positive attitude does not equate approving of the way things are right now.
I gave you a lengthy explanation of all of my reasons for this and all of the reasons why you're viewpoints are based in as much "fact" as anyone else's around here. I can link back to that post if necessary.
And if you're simply unwilling to do that right now, then agree to disagree but please don't turn this into a bickering thread. Everyone doesn't have to agree with your attitude.

There is no need to be so overly dramatic. They aren't ruining your life. They are going to do EXACTLY what you want them to do. But because they aren't doing it as soon as you snap your fingers and they aren't doing it on your schedule, suddenly they are an enemy. To be so angry this early into the process isn't going to make it any easier.

The US State Department made a decision to place an IV post only in Montreal. I can only speculate as to the why but I figure the rationale has something to do with the geographical area where most requests for immigrant visas originate. Other consulates cannot "share the load" as they are not equipped to deal with immigrant visas.

While I believe that some officers may look up Facebook if they think it contains some info that is relevant to the case, I doubt that it's a practice for them to automatically scrutinize every single social website or Immigration Forum.
First, I'm sure they don't have the time or resources to pay someone to skim trough the endless sea of posts that are out there.
Second, why would they do it? As I said, they can look up something about a case they have; maybe someone mentioned "hey, him and I met on Facebook, trough his sister". The officer can look up Facebook to see if they can find and confirm that info, but why would they randomly look at immigration websites? Surely, we know that they are not confirming or denying information given by other members, and I doubt enough details are given here for them to pinpoint anyone, find where they live and act up on whatever information they found online.
A few months/years back, there was a member who said that they worked for USCIS. He was here with us because he was engaged to someone from another country. He was nice enough to answer questions (you can still find the "interview" somewhere on VJ) and he said that most people at USCIS are not aware of VJ, or if they are, they do not visit it.

There are 2 service centers named CSC and VSC. CSC employs 1010 I-130 adjudicators and VSC employs 505 I-130 adjudicators.
In the U.S, every year there are 750,000 I-130 petitioners say all are USC petitioners. They send their package to Chicago Lock box. TLA for it, let's say CLB. CLB checks the load of each SC and forwards it to them. Say 500,000 went to CSC and 250,000 went to VSC.
Always at a particular time, 10 employees in CSC and 5 employees of VSC are on vacation since they are humans. Now let's do a math again. Balance employees in CSC is 1000 and in VSC 500.
A Quiz - How many petitions each CSC and VSC employee gets for an equal distribution?
Ummmmm... Nobody answers. Let me calculate. CSC employee gets 500 and VSC employee gets 500.
Some of the employees in each SC are hardworking. What does that mean? They don't smoke, don't go to pantry so often and do not discuss about their dogs and cats at office. They process 5 petitions a day. Those hardly working employees process 4 petitions a day.
Now another quiz! How many working days in a month? Take out 4 Sat, 4 Sun and 1 or 2 holidays. Let's assume 20 working days.
During this process, some name checks are initiated. This is really not a spelling check. First name, Last name, DOB etc. are fed into another system and they get an output. Some names bleed, some not. Sometimes, some innocent names also bleed. Bleeding names will be hospitalized to get some more cure. Non-bleeding ones come back to the SC.
Ok! Now out of non-bleeding ones, some missed to include a previous divorce decree, some included a copy of marriage certificate which not clearly readable, so on an so forth. Now the employee is interested to see those originals. They issue another sweet TLA named RFE. Some petitioners will respond immediately to this RFE. Some may be on vacation or busy getting some of the documents from various sources.
Ok, final quiz! How many months it takes for a petition to be processed? Let's take a ball park.
Hard working employee gets 500 petitions and 20 working days in a month and process 5 per day. To process a petition on an average takes 5 months! Oh boy! This doesn't mean the first petition is processed on day 1. Since previous petitions are in his/her queue. Hence the term - recurring process!
Hardly working employee gets 500 petitions and 20 working days in a month and process 4 per day. To process a petition on an average takes more than 6 months! Oh geez!
Finally they take a cumulative average and put in this website: https://egov.uscis.gov/cris/processingTimesDisplay.do
Loto
Footenote: This work out is purely hypothetical for an illustrative purpose!

I totally agree with what Aleksa and Nico mentioned. If you or your fiancee mention/address each other as husband and wife, it will defintely stir up alot of problems. Me and my husband (he was my fiancee then) went through chaos at the Lagos embassy because we were addressing each other as husband and wife, and the CO believed that we were secretly married. We eventually got the visa but man its too much of a hassal to deal with. Please contact your states senator/congressman if you need additional assistance. All the Best.
Nwanyioma

Ok, just looking for some advice here..
I filed our K1 petition back in mid-April (before I found VJ). It was received by VSC and accepted (NOA1) within a week. A couple days after receiving the NOA1, for some reason, I got nervous about filing on our own and wanted to have an attorney review it.
I did, and he looked at what I had filed and told me, "It looks great and is the same as we would have filed. I could take your $$ but, to be honest, you've already done my job." I thanked him for his honesty, took his card for future reference, and left.
Now, I'm starting to wonder if it's getting close to "future reference" time. If our petition passes the 5-month mark, and I have to contact USCIS and/or my Congressman and Senators, is it worth having an attorney do so? Is there any advantage whatsoever? Or, should it be reserved for, God forbid, if the visa is denied (if we ever get to the embassy) and we need to appeal, etc.?
Has anyone ever brought an attorney on-board well after filing with any success?
I'm trying not to run every conceivable scenario through my head but sometimes it's difficult not to...