early / walk-in biometrics useless or not?!

[Ireentje 0]

Hi everyone,

AOS-ing from F1 here. Received my biometrics appointment for Syracuse 3/26, appointment date 4/12. Did a successful walk-in today, 3/28!

A question though; the USCIS guard at the door (not the person actually taking the finger prints / photo, but the one checking for your appointment letter) said she would let me do a walk-in after a bit of haggling, but she said something to the effect of it being at my own risk, "them" (NBC?) not having anything to "match it against yet", and warned that "they" (again, not clear who) would in any case not be looking into the system to see if I had completed my biometrics until my appointment date, which was 4/12.

Does anyone know if this is true? The "matching" thing seemed a bit weird to me anyway, I mean; my case is in the system, so... But I'm not so sure about USCIS not checking for biometrics until the actual appointment date.

She basically made it sound like early / walk-in biometrics is useless, but I've heard otherwise on this forum. It is possible (though not certain, I understand) that this might speed the process up just a little bit, right?Then again, she wasn't the friendliest person in the first place... (I remember her well from when my mother-in-law naturalized last year)... It was very nice to find out that once inside, the actual USCIS person taking the prints and photo could not have been nicer!

[Inky 1,111]

Early biometrics doesn't speed up the process. ASC center does not have your file electronically until the date on your appointment. They cant FWD your prints or anything until that day. But going early means they can FWD the prints early morning instead of waiting for you to come in.

[Little_My 464]

I also did an early drop-in with the hopes of that speeding up my EAD process. No such luck. From what I have seen in these forums, and also based on my personal experience, doing it early is pretty much useless in terms of speeding up the process. It won't harm you either though, so at least you have it out of the way now.

[Ireentje 0]

Thanks for your help!

[t889 0]

Thanks for your help!

I dont know how much it really does speed up the process... im not really sure what happened to me but i went in for a walk-in biometrics and in the afternoon my EAD status changed to "card has been sent for production" :| I dont know how reliable this is! I am going to call to verify.. as i know the EAD cant be produced without fingerprints..