K-1 Visa: Can you choose a Processing Center? Is it beneficial?

[angey_blueskies 2]

My fiance and I are readying to submit our 129F and all the other stuff that goes along with the first step in the K-1 visa.

My fiance (the American petitioner) lives near Bellingham, WA. I am a Canadian living in Surrey, BC.

I was looking into processing times and it seems that the California Service Center (CSC) is currently processing K-1 visas faster than the Texas Service Center. The 129-F form instructs that we should send it to Texas, yet CSC is listed as processing K-1 visas. CSC is showing a processing time frame of 5 months.

Whereas the TSC is showing that it is having a processing delay on K-1 visas and the filing date of the last 129F was December 21, 2014.

Can we send our 129F application to the CSC? Would it be beneficial and is it possible it could help our application be processed faster? Or is it best to send it to the TSC as the 129F instructs?

Please advise

[Anh map 2,098]

You send it in as per the instructions. The cases are distributed to the service centers in a balanced manner.

[ekl3s1a 1]

The address in texas is a USCIS receiving center, they just receive all the application and i believe scan and cash the check but they send it to the appropriate processing center. I'm not sure if WA falls under CSC but from what I know and what I read on this forum they no longer send K1 application to TSC as it is back logged so to relieve them they send it to the other processing center. Pray that you get CSC but I believe your application will be sent wherever WA falls under. Good luck on your journey.

[racheal&david 108]

The Dallas lockbox is not the same as the Texas Service Center. All I129f applications are sent to the lockbox and distributed to the appropriate service center.

This is a common misconception but no worries, just mail your application to the address listed on the USCIS website.

Good luck!

[Lian&David 6]

All K-1 visa applications are sent to the Texas drop box. I know that is scary, it was for me, but ours was sent promptly (2 days) from the drop box location to California. The address is in the K-1 visa instructions from the government. I have been seeing processing times through California this summer of 30 to 35 days. Ours screamed through in 14 days.

[Unidentified 2,930]

No you have to send it to the Texas Lockbox and then decide where it's going. They used to do it based on in what states you live but now they're trying to balance it out a bit as it created chaos at the Texas Service Center.

[TBoneTX 46,300]

*** Thread moved from K-1 Process forum to the USCIS Service Centers forum -- topic involves distribution of processing. ***

[Pennycat 880]

My fiance and I are readying to submit our 129F and all the other stuff that goes along with the first step in the K-1 visa.

My fiance (the American petitioner) lives near Bellingham, WA. I am a Canadian living in Surrey, BC.

I was looking into processing times and it seems that the California Service Center (CSC) is currently processing K-1 visas faster than the Texas Service Center. The 129-F form instructs that we should send it to Texas, yet CSC is listed as processing K-1 visas. CSC is showing a processing time frame of 5 months.

Whereas the TSC is showing that it is having a processing delay on K-1 visas and the filing date of the last 129F was December 21, 2014.

Can we send our 129F application to the CSC? Would it be beneficial and is it possible it could help our application be processed faster? Or is it best to send it to the TSC as the 129F instructs?

Please advise

Nope. Why would anyone have chosen to send their applications to Texas otherwise?

The all-around good news for you is that:

(1) currently, about 100% of petitions are being routed to California, which seems to be maintaining about a 2-month turnover. That 5 months you found on the "official" site means "within our stated goal time of 5 months". 2 months is within 5 months. People get through in as little as two weeks.

(2) Texas has not been taking petitions since the end of March (except for a few Aprils that accidentally got there). February is about 70% done and they've already done a fair bit of March. So that means that if you are put "in line" in Texas, there's only about 6 weeks worth of filers ahead of you in line. Meaning---no backlog anymore. When I applied in February of 2015, they hadn't yet started working on September of 2014. Over 5 months' worth of filers ahead of me in line.

Bottom line: you can't control it no matter what. And the processing times between the centers should be more-or-less evened out now. If they ever open another center to 129fs again.

[angey_blueskies 2]

Thank you everyone! I can't wait til the whole process is over and done with. And here we're just starting it. Take care.

[ClickityClackity 134]

On 9/1/2015 at 10:01 PM, Pennycat said:

Nope. Why would anyone have chosen to send their applications to Texas otherwise?

The all-around good news for you is that:

(1) currently, about 100% of petitions are being routed to California, which seems to be maintaining about a 2-month turnover. That 5 months you found on the "official" site means "within our stated goal time of 5 months". 2 months is within 5 months. People get through in as little as two weeks.

(2) Texas has not been taking petitions since the end of March (except for a few Aprils that accidentally got there). February is about 70% done and they've already done a fair bit of March. So that means that if you are put "in line" in Texas, there's only about 6 weeks worth of filers ahead of you in line. Meaning---no backlog anymore. When I applied in February of 2015, they hadn't yet started working on September of 2014. Over 5 months' worth of filers ahead of me in line.

Bottom line: you can't control it no matter what. And the processing times between the centers should be more-or-less evened out now. If they ever open another center to 129fs again.

How do you know all this stuff? Genuinely curious

[Pennycat 880]

This was 3 years ago, but at the time, USCIS made an announcement regarding this. Plus, your receipt number would begin with WAC or TSC (I believe those were the codes), which indicated what service center your petition was routed to. Right after that announcement, all new filers got WAC (or whatever the California centers code was). As far as I know, that hasn't changed. 

 

Everything else I said was going off of what the current processing times were saying. Plus at the time, someone had a data crawler or something (I dont remember, I wasn't really involved besides being told the numbers) which got the total number in the line, plus their NOA1 dates and did the math. I believe that one is long gone but I do know that similar efforts popped up over the years.