What was your processing time?

[lilsadie 50]

Hi all! I'm a total newbi at all of this!

My partner and I have been living together in Australia for 4 years now and since DOMA we have decided to move to the states. We recently got my partner PR in Aus, but it seems so much easier here than to get the USA visa!

We are going through an attorney in California (Might have been an expensive mistake as it doesn't seem all that necessary really!)

Im just wondering why some peoples K1 takes hundreds of days and some people are approved a lot faster? Or is it just luck of the draw?

Does anyone have any good info, tips to prepare us, etc?

We will be submitting the first part of our application in 2 weeks!!!

[Lilay 87]

I'm also curious about the answer.

[sweetswinks 400]

I'm keen to know this too!

[charlottelizabeth 11]

It's just luck of the draw! There is really no rhyme or reasoning behind why one couple waits 200+ days and another under 100. Sometimes one processing centre will be working at a faster rate than another but you can never guess which will be the fastest at x point in time.

Ours went like this:

24 Sept 2012 - send off petition

01 Oct 2012 - first NOA1

31 May 2013 - NOA2

24 Jun 2013 - packet 3 received (medical, police clearance, etc)

27 Aug 2013 - packet 3 sent back

16 Sept 2013 - packet 4 received

24 Sept 2013 - interview @ Sydney (approved)

04 Oct 2013 - visa in hand

When we applied, (with CSC) they were overloaded with DACA applicants & k1 processing screeched to a near halt. You just never know!

Good luck with everything, if you follow all the guides on this website you most definitely do not need to waste your money on an attorney! Just my opinion tho!

[Rinni 3]

Well, we expected a good (general) 6 month waiting period between NOA 1 and NOA 2. However something happened and we were approved in 20 days. It completely threw Tony and I off since I had already planned to visit him around the time the NVC/ US Consulate here would receive my case. Naturally, I had to apply for the NOA 2 extension, which went smooth and they actually didn't comment on it today when I had my interview.

I'm very happy to be approved now and I'll fix up my timeline in my forum signature so you can see the dates of our case.

My suspected comical reasoning behind getting approved in 20 days (NOA 2) is - Someone dropped the pile at the CSC office and ours made the shuffle to the top. Haha!

[Ben + Michelle 9]

Our process was really fast and smooth. Visajourney helped us a lot to preparing for the next steps. When we received packet 3 for example, we had all the documents ready (police certificate, birth certificate, etc) and could send it back to the embassy the same day.

It took us 85 days from petitition sent to visa in hand.

Edited April 1, 2014 by Ben + Michelle

[Salt&Pepper 4]

Hi all! I'm a total newbi at all of this!

My partner and I have been living together in Australia for 4 years now and since DOMA we have decided to move to the states. We recently got my partner PR in Aus, but it seems so much easier here than to get the USA visa!

We are going through an attorney in California (Might have been an expensive mistake as it doesn't seem all that necessary really!)

Im just wondering why some peoples K1 takes hundreds of days and some people are approved a lot faster? Or is it just luck of the draw?

Does anyone have any good info, tips to prepare us, etc?

We will be submitting the first part of our application in 2 weeks!!!

1) The biggest variable in the K1 timeline is the amount of time USCIS takes to approve your I-129f petition. As others have said, some service centers seem to process applications faster than others. Unfortunately, you have no control over where which service center your petition gets sent to--it seems to be just luck of the draw. Once your I-129f petition has been approved (i.e. you receive NOA2), the rest of the process for us Aussie-American couples is very straightforward / predictable. The approved application is sent to the National Visa Center, the National Visa Center does their own approval, then they send it to the U.S. Consulate in Sydney, and the U.S. Consulate in Sydney contacts you with an interview date & time.* Based on other Aussie-American couples' timelines, this whole process from NOA2 to interview seems to take about about 60-65 days with minimal variation.

[*the U.S. Consulate in Sydney has recently streamlined their process a bit, so the time between when your application arrives in Sydney and when you have your interview should decrease]

2) If you check out the timeline statistics on this website, you will see that the average processing time at all the service centers has SIGNIFICANTLY decreased in recent months, so now is a good time to apply!

3) Be sure to be very thorough in compiling your I-129f petition and support documentation. If there are any gaps in information or the petition raises questions, you will get a Request for Further Evidence (RFE), and this will delay the processing / approval of your I-129f. USCIS is a real stickler for details (I read somewhere on this website that someone got an RFE for abbreviating Australia with "AU" when writing their address), so it is not uncommon for RFEs to be issued / this is one thing that often delays approval. If your lawyer is any good though, they should take care of all that.

4) From what I have read on this website, Australians seem to get their I-129f petition approved much faster than applicants from many other countries, probably because the fraud risk is so low (quality of life here is pretty sweet--people aren't leaving Australia and going to the U.S. for a better paying job or the social welfare benefits).

5) I also think it helps that the two of you have been living together in Australia for an extended period of time, and that you have a partner visa. My fiance and I have been living in Australia together for 3 years, so when we submitted the I-129f, we were able to provide evidence of that (e.g. lease agreement, photo IDs with identical addresses, etc.). We got approved in 19 days. Plus, having a partner visa shows that you have already successfully proved your relationship (albeit to another government), so it's sort of a no-brainer for USCIS, whose minimum requirement is that you have met in person in the last two years and are committed to getting married within 90 days of arrival in the U.S.

6) As for tips on filing the I-129f...

- Check out the sample forms on this website. There are small details that they clue you into that you may not have thought of otherwise (e.g. writing in all periods of unemployment in addition to employment in the "Applicant's employment last five years" section of the G-325a).

- The more supporting evidence the better.

- Compile the forms and evidence in a way that's super easy to read and understand (I probably used like 30 sticky notes to explain the significance of each piece of evidence and lots of tabs to highlight names, dates, etc.).

- Be very specific with dates and locations when writing the supplemental statement explaining the circumstances under which you met.

- Make sure your lawyer knows what he/she is doing and has your best interests in mind. I've heard stories of people having more trouble with the application going through a lawyer than they would if they had done some research on the web and submitted the application themselves. I don't know if it was because a lawyer's time = money and they wanted more of it, or if these lawyers simply didn't know their stuff. With that said, if you and/or your partner have complicating factors (e.g. a criminal record, previous marriages, previous K-1 applications, children), it may be necessary to consult with a lawyer. I totally get how daunting U.S. immigration is and why you would want a lawyer regardless of your circumstances. I met with an immigration lawyer in Washington DC when I went to a friend's wedding in the States last year because I wanted a professional's input on our options (E-3 vs. K-1) and to make sure we didn't stuff anything up, but even the lawyer said that while he was happy to take our case, he thought our application would be straightforward enough that we could do it on our own.

7) In case it helps, here is what we submitted as "proof of having met in person in the last two years":

- Copies of various travel documents dating back to 2010 (plane tickets / itineraries, bus & train tickets) with both of our names on them indicating that we have travelled together to a bunch of places for holidays. Fortunately, we both have a habit of saving all of our emails, so anything that we had booked online and received a confirmation email for was in a folder in our email accounts somewhere. It was just a matter of printing them out.

- Copies of my Australian visas.

- Copies of all pages of our passports, showing stamps that correspond to the travel documents provided.

- A copy of our lease agreement with both of our names and signatures on it.

- Copies of the front and back of our Australian drivers licenses / photo IDs, showing we have the same address.

- Five color photos of us together (one for each year that we've been together) with names, dates, and locations written on the back. I chose photos taken in a variety of different places, many on the holidays for which we provided travel documents.

- A 3/4 page statement explaining how we met and tying all the pieces of evidence together. It was sort of like a story of the facts of our relationship--met while we were both living in NYC, he moved back to Australia because his U.S. visa expired, I moved to Australia on a Work & Holiday visa to be with him, I got a job and a 457, first we lived together at A, now we live together at B, we went on all these holidays together, etc. I used exact dates and locations for everything so that it was easy to connect the pieces of evidence provided to the story.

In sum, while some of the variation in processing time is due to chance, I think a significant portion of it has to do with factors such as the country the beneficiary is from, whether/not you receive an RFE, your relationship history (whether you've met in person once or have been living together for several years), and personal circumstances that cause USCIS to take more time doing your background checks and confirming your eligibility for the K-1 visa (e.g. criminal history, past marriages, name changes).

One last thing, K-3 visas (the one you apply for if you get married outside the U.S.) take WAY longer than K-1 visas, so don't go get married in New Zealand and then try to move to the U.S. This is evident from the information on VJ, and the lawyer I met with in Washington DC said the same thing. If you want to live in the U.S., get married in the U.S.

[razspaz13 30]

sure now you tell me to marry in the usa LOL, we married in 2000 in Oz

such is life

cheers