VSC on a coffee break..for the week

[rayandmel 39]

This made me laugh.... Friend, I am at 5 months and 3 days... I called yesterday and do you want to know how that goes.... Let me tell you how that goes.... He asked what center I was at. I told him VSC. He said "let me look up your case...." "yes, you are beyond the 5 month goal, however, I have to look up and see what day Vermont is currently saying they are processing" HOLD..... Came back. "Well, VSC is currently processing files from 1/09/12.... so that means you are still within "NORMAL" processing times for that center and all you can do it wait. We will not file a service request unless the center is processing files after 1/24/12" (My NOA1 date).

Fantastic system! Good luck on your journey!

This is absolutely correct. The timeline on VJ is just an estimate. The only number im worried about is 5 months, and thats from USCIS. So at 5 months and one day ill be calling. Some people get theirs approved faster and some slower. Its very inconsistant

[rayandmel 39]

I called yesterday, they said 1/9/12.... NOT 1/23/12....

If they are processing Jan 23rd they passed mine without an approval

[MangoAve 25]

Technically (according to the data), assuming the normality of the percentage mean of VJers vs. the actual petitioners of the I-129F, the percentage of the total population of I-129F filers that come to VJ will fall between 4.9% - 6.9% about 99.5% of the time each month. So the 99% confidence interval is about (4.9% , 6.9%).

So it's even greater than what you thought, and MUCH greater than what I thought.

These are the stats I used:

Mean = 5.9%.

SE = about .3337%. SD = about 1%, and n = 10 months. So SE = .01 / 10^.5 = .3%.

Assumed approx. normality. If I had a greater number of months to work with, then I could conclude approx. normality based on CLT. Unfortunately, VJ only goes back 12 months.

Lol. Needed to go through a third process to get the same answer?

[MangoAve 25]

Some people on the message board have figured out a way to search by case number, not a VJ user's timeline. If I understand their efforts correctly, they have taken the EAC numbers they're given, put them into a spreadsheet and manually typed them in on the USCIS website to obtain 500+ numbers of people who have submitted I129Fs. If you type all of those in manually and see that none are approved and they're all from the service center, it's more accurate.

I went through using my case number and did a sequential + and - from my number. Within a spread of 117 numbers there were 11 for I-130 and 18 for I-129F. But I even went down 1000 lower just to check and there were some still with the same date. All cases go in have a number, including I-485, I-821 and there was even I290B appeal to the commissioner. The only way it be accurate is to have your spread sheet early enough to catch the movement, i.e. see when it was received and then catch the date it is updated for approval or RFE.

[MangoAve 25]

While the stats estimates are sound; the problem is that you are assuming a process (statistical process that is) that is stable; and it is not. The constant transfers, additions of load (Syrian protected status, H1B fiscal year, the recent Obama decision to grant working documents to a population estimated to be about 800-900 thou; etc. makes this process quite unstable and thus statistics do not apply well. At same time, we are not even accounting for what i'd call outliers: RFEs that require additional processing time.

At best, I'd give that when a service center gets into a 'regular' cycle (about once a year for several months) then, stats might be useful and that is why at times, VJ sampling fits well with actual outcomes.

The whole underlying point I made your reply has not been able to disprove. All you are saying is that transfers or additions to work load can change statistics. If they are focusing their efforts on forms other than I-129F or I-130, then approvals will not occur on these cases. That's it. The numbers were stating the sample size we have to work with and the sample size is consistent with even fluxuations in filers.

[yali 1]

I called today to file a service request because I am past the 5 month mark at VSC...I filed an I-130 I was told they were processing 01/23/2012 which so happens to be my receipt date so yup that's right no service request because I am still within "normal" processing time...I was told to allow an additional 30 days...VSC is just all ####### and very inconsistent

[unlockingsky 94]

I called today to file a service request because I am past the 5 month mark at VSC...I filed an I-130 I was told they were processing 01/23/2012 which so happens to be my receipt date so yup that's right no service request because I am still within "normal" processing time...I was told to allow an additional 30 days...VSC is just all ####### and very inconsistent

keep calling and you will get someone able to put a service request for you. i was able to put one in somewhere after 20th time.

just tell them you are outside of processing time and would like to put in a request. if denied... contact ombudsman because someone there told you that you should be able to put in a service request after 5 months. this is a fact they lied because i was told several times before my processing time was up...

Edited June 29, 2012 by unlockingsky

[rade2rising 205]

thank god CSC is going on schedule

[jmoney 1]

keep calling and you will get someone able to put a service request for you. i was able to put one in somewhere after 20th time.

just tell them you are outside of processing time and would like to put in a request. if denied... contact ombudsman because someone there told you that you should be able to put in a service request after 5 months. this is a fact they lied because i was told several times before my processing time was up...

i'd like to also add to this -- after calling the call center for the 7-8 time in the last 2 weeks, i finally got a CSR that was helpful enough to tell me that if you tell the level 1 CSR twice that you want to escalate to the next level, they are required to escalate you to the next level. the level 2 CSR has the ability to put in a service request for you, although they will also tell you that by doing so you'll get a letter in the mail 15 days later with their response. a lot of good that will do right? but there you are!

[jmoney 1]

you know all this statistics on the uscis website and response from the vsc of "we're currently processing 1/9/12" is really a bunch of #######. my fiancee is on a number of forums where she's talked with many other beneficiaries that are in the same situation as us, and they've filed for their 129f petition in february 2012 and even march 2012, where their petition got shipped to the vsc, and they STILL got processed in around 3 to 3.5 months. how the hell did they skip pass the "we're currently processing 1/9/12"? what gives??? just venting....

[sabi 148]

right...my fiance called on Tuesday (July 3rd) and still got a reply 01/09! That means they are processing that one day since 3 weeks now... very interesting specially that we see people being approved towards end of January... We are calling them today again and definitely will try to get through to level 2 CSR as this is just ridiculous at this stage!

There is still around 200 petitions untouched between 01/03 and 01/20 (these are the dates I have been checking for the past few months)... as slow as they are at the moment we won't be approved in July unless they concentrate on I129F only or shift some petitions to other centers, which god help us will result with a lot of RFE and missing petitions!

[Nellie&Jason 4]

There are always periods of slow downs due to work load, supervisory and Obama requests slowing stuff down. They will return.

Does anyone have an estimate of how long these slow downs usually last? If I'm not mistaken it started slowing down in May 2012, now I wonder when should we expect things to go back to normal given past experiences?

We are April filers, and we can't believe we may have to wait longer than 5 months to get our paper work our of VCS:((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((

[Nellie&Jason 4]

I doubt this is true. I would be surprised if even .25% of the population is on this forum. How did you figure this out?

If you look up the K1 Forum, there's an interview posted with a person representing VCS. He said that about 20-30 cases get aproval daily. Given, the average aproval rate on VJ is 1 case per day, we can estimate the VJ sample to be about 3-5% of the actual population.

It could be. Without a measure of spread there is no way to determine the probability of this.

[sabi 148]

i'd like to also add to this -- after calling the call center for the 7-8 time in the last 2 weeks, i finally got a CSR that was helpful enough to tell me that if you tell the level 1 CSR twice that you want to escalate to the next level, they are required to escalate you to the next level. the level 2 CSR has the ability to put in a service request for you, although they will also tell you that by doing so you'll get a letter in the mail 15 days later with their response. a lot of good that will do right? but there you are!

Thank you, that was really helpful! My fiance rang today and sort of followed your instruction and didnt tell level 1 person why he wants to speak to Tier 2 and after 5 times that he had to repeat please put me through to tier 2 , the woman finally did it! We managed to put in a service request! Looks like it worked for you, hoping to hear sth soon!