Thoughts on keeping families together (and a possible petition)

[Kaylara 814]

And I'm not sure why so many people don't understand what takes them so long to approve cases. There are THOUSANDS of petitions in the line at USCIS and only so many adjudicators. Also, don't forget there there are many different types of petitions they have to adjudicate, not only I-129F's and I-130's. All those long months you spend waiting for your approval is actually waiting for an adjudicator to process all the petitions received before yours to get to yours.

There are many couples that have had to be separated for months, even years waiting to get a green light from immigration and there will be many more. My visa process might not have been as long as some other couples', but I had to wait for my turn, survived the wait and now, after 3 years in the US with my husband, that lonely, painful wait is just a distant memory. The time we spent waiting is really nothing compared to the happy years we've spent together already and many happy years to come.

Yes, I'm sure that I would not have been as upset with a 6 month wait for my fiance either. Or for my husband. 6 months is much better than we were expecting for our process to be complete. I've been waiting 9 months, and they can't give me any kind of a time frame for when we're even going to move to the NVC phase.

As a person who has already spent many years happily married to my husband, this separation is much, much worse than the 2 years we spent dating long distance. We hadn't combined our lives already. I had my life, and he had his, and we were excited at the prospect of combining the two, but we didn't already know whether we'd be successful or not, but we were going to have fun trying. The knowing how happy we make each other, how well we work together, and not having any kind of an idea as to when we're going to be done with this is torturous. I also doubt that our children are going to forget that their father was not here for over a year of their lives.

If they're having a staffing problem, then they need to hire more people. Period. We pay enough for this process, we deserve decent service. In this case, however, our cases were sent into storage for half a year. Considering that their goal is 5 months, this is entirely unacceptable. They prioritized the DACA cases over ours, also completely unacceptable. If they had not decided to process the DACA files at the incredible speed they did, we would probably be having a delay, but nothing like what we're currently seeing.

I'm happy that you went through so quickly. Please try to have a little compassion for those of us who are having a rough time being separated much longer from our spouses than you were from your fiance. I'll be lucky if he's here 1 1/2 years after we applied. That's 3 times as long as you waited. And I'm sure there are people who will be waiting much, much longer. And it sucks, big time. I'm not going to belittle their pain by telling them they just need to be patient and suck it up.

[missicy 87]

First of all, you don't know how hard or not hard my 6 month wait was; everyone's circumstances are different and the length of wait is not the only factor.

Secondly, I wasn't trying to belittle anyone's pain or tell anyone to suck it up (I'm sorry if my post sounded like I was, English is not my 1st language). All I was trying to say is that there will be an end to your wait and that you will be with your loved ones, some sooner, some later, but all this WILL end. The wait and frustration are only temporary and once you are finally with your loved ones all this will be in the past and forgotten. Good luck to everyone!