I-129F March 2017 Filers

[MentalVoid 191]

10 minutes ago, gob332 said:

Interview scheduled for August 16th. Light at the end of the tunnel...

 

I sincerely hope that everyone who hasn't received their NOA2 have a good day tomorrow!

Good luck with the interview! That's so close!

 

I'm hoping Nick can get here around the end of September, but who knows with NVC and Embassy processing. As long as he's here by Christmas I'll be happy.

[dkmfan85 832]

It looks like now every calendar day in March has received an approval. Will be interesting to see when the first few April approvals start to roll out that aren't obviously expedited cases.

[AnJ Co 1,676]

Some stats off their page..... Kinda blows my mind to think how enormous this whole thing is.

Interesting that looking at the 2nd qtr results, and looking at VJ stats, They were working on all older stuff during the time period.  Their warehouse has got to be H U G E.

 

JAN FEB MAR 2017 1st qtr 129F petitions:

Petitions Received 12,837  (of which - 1,090 are reported on VJ or roughly 8 1/2%)

Approved 10,179

Denied 2,150

Pending at end of the quarter 15,746 (warehouse is getting a bit crowded)

 

Apr May Jun 2017 2nd qtr 129F petitions:

Petitions Received 13,194

Approved 6,864

Denied 2,681

Pending at end of the quarter 20,082 (ooops, need a bigger warehouse now)

 

We know they have more work than k1, so totals of that total work are:

 

Total forms rcv 1st qtr 2,117,872, Approved 1,701,602, Denied 137,766,

Pending at end of 1st qtr 4,552,505

Total forms rcv 2nd qtr 2,226,310, Approved 1,790,506, Denied 149,755,

Pending at end of 2nd qtr 4,969,865 (almost 5 million pending cases - we are talking cases, right??  Looks like National Debt)   

 

All in all, I don't envy this place at all. 

 

Source:

https://www.uscis.gov/tools/reports-studies/immigration-forms-data/data-set-all-uscis-application-and-petition-form-types

[twoDs 590]

1 hour ago, dkmfan85 said:

It looks like now every calendar day in March has received an approval. Will be interesting to see when the first few April approvals start to roll out that aren't obviously expedited cases.

Not to nit-pick, just being nerdy: there's a single NOA1 for March 5th, and it hasn't had an approval, but it could be stale (it's not hyperlinked to a profile in the database.)

 

There are actually six new NOA2's in the database for March tonight, so not everyone is speaking up -- or it's a carryover from yesterday that got updated: 3/15, 3/20, two on 3/27, and 3/30 and 3/31.

 

Those four of the six were Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the UK.

 

Here's kind of a new way to look at the spread -- I sorted the numbers by the percent with NOA2. In theory the beginning of the month should be highest and the end of the month lowest if everything were processed in order. In reality there's some pretty surprising outliers, namely those unlucky filers of March 10th. Currently 53% of NOA1s have a NOA2, and the latest date with more than 50% of NOA2s done with more than 9 NOA1s (to weed out the oddball days) is 3/23.

 

2017-Mar-25	1	1	100.00%
2017-Mar-07	18	15	83.30%
2017-Mar-08	5	4	80.00%
2017-Mar-15	15	12	80.00%
2017-Mar-06	32	24	75.00%
2017-Mar-14	12	9	75.00%
2017-Mar-13	19	14	73.70%
2017-Mar-02	7	5	71.40%
2017-Mar-11	10	7	70.00%
2017-Mar-01	22	15	68.20%
2017-Mar-16	17	11	64.70%
2017-Mar-03	15	9	60.00%
2017-Mar-20	23	12	52.20%
2017-Mar-04	2	1	50.00%
2017-Mar-23	10	5	50.00%
2017-Mar-26	2	1	50.00%
2017-Mar-09	19	9	47.40%
2017-Mar-22	14	6	42.90%
2017-Mar-21	15	6	40.00%
2017-Mar-17	9	3	33.30%
2017-Mar-27	21	7	33.30%
2017-Mar-24	13	4	30.80%
2017-Mar-29	18	5	27.80%
2017-Mar-28	19	5	26.30%
2017-Mar-10	9	2	22.20%
2017-Mar-30	5	1	20.00%
2017-Mar-31	15	1	6.67%
2017-Mar-05	1	0	0.00%

 

[twoDs 590]

24 minutes ago, AnJ Co said:

Some stats off their page..... Kinda blows my mind to think how enormous this whole thing is.

Interesting that looking at the 2nd qtr results, and looking at VJ stats, They were working on all older stuff during the time period.  Their warehouse has got to be H U G E.

Holy cow, that's another 5,000 in the backlog, or more than a full month of work. And look as how many fewer approvals there are.

 

There's the delay, and the backlog, right there. 3,315 fewer approvals and 4,336 more pending, so basically 3,300 applications were

delayed, sliding them into pending, and another 1,000 got stacked on top of them. That's 50 applications per day. Going off a past

posting, let's say it's 20 minutes per K1 instead of 15, which means one person can do 24 in an 8 hour shift -- so just two fewer people

processing K1s could do this in a 13-week quarter. That also means they went from maybe 6-8 people to 4-6 people from the first to

the second quarter. So it would barely take anything to really derail processing!

 

It's interesting, VJ doesn't seem to have anywhere near the same percent of denials shown.

I wonder if those are people that just sign a name to the form with no backup and pray?

 

 

[KaraChi 26]

3 hours ago, cherryblossoms916 said:

Hello! what's your rfe? and did they already received it and update your status?

I had to send in a new passport photo. And I received my notice Friday through email and text. I received it yesterday and sent it off by 12pm today. 

[AnJ Co 1,676]

3 minutes ago, twoDs said:

Holy cow, that's another 5,000 in the backlog, or more than a full month of work. And look as how many fewer approvals there are.

 

There's the delay, and the backlog, right there. 3,315 fewer approvals and 4,336 more pending, so basically 3,300 applications were

delayed, sliding them into pending, and another 1,000 got stacked on top of them. That's 50 applications per day. Going off a past

posting, let's say it's 20 minutes per K1 instead of 15, which means one person can do 24 in an 8 hour shift -- so just two fewer people

processing K1s could do this in a 13-week quarter. That also means they went from maybe 6-8 people to 4-6 people from the first to

the second quarter. So it would barely take anything to really derail processing!

 

It's interesting, VJ doesn't seem to have anywhere near the same percent of denials shown.

I wonder if those are people that just sign a name to the form with no backup and pray?

 

 

Yep, these numbers put a new abstract on the big picture.  We saw recently how the B1 B2 or some kind of visas got sent to CSC for processing and VJ members very soon started noticing a drop in processing.  For every action, there's a reaction.  Another thing I find interesting is how there now seems to be a line in the sand between Mar and Apr.  There aren't any Apr approvals now (other than a token few expedites), and this coincides with the pull back of their processing date from 2/15 to 1/2.  It appears to me they are concentrating on getting everything prior to 4/1 cleared out???. Then I wonder - as earlier today, I noticed some holes in March that are still apparent when just surveying the petitions on VJ..... and your last post caught them as well in your lower percentiles. I theorize here.... but Perhaps these are next in line before Aug 1st move to Apr filers and what's left over from March and prior back to backlog for overtime.  Just a theory, but they aren't bashful about their 'pending' numbers hahaha

What's your theory on all this?

[dkmfan85 832]

33 minutes ago, twoDs said:

Not to nit-pick, just being nerdy: there's a single NOA1 for March 5th, and it hasn't had an approval, but it could be stale (it's not hyperlinked to a profile in the database.)

 

There are actually six new NOA2's in the database for March tonight, so not everyone is speaking up -- or it's a carryover from yesterday that got updated: 3/15, 3/20, two on 3/27, and 3/30 and 3/31.

 

Those four of the six were Brazil, Canada, Japan, and the UK.

 

Here's kind of a new way to look at the spread -- I sorted the numbers by the percent with NOA2. In theory the beginning of the month should be highest and the end of the month lowest if everything were processed in order. In reality there's some pretty surprising outliers, namely those unlucky filers of March 10th. Currently 53% of NOA1s have a NOA2, and the latest date with more than 50% of NOA2s done with more than 9 NOA1s (to weed out the oddball days) is 3/23.

 

 

March 5th is a Sunday. You'll notice there are no other Sunday dates listed (12, 19, 26). Someone goofed filling out their timeline.

[AnJ Co 1,676]

20 minutes ago, twoDs said:

It's interesting, VJ doesn't seem to have anywhere near the same percent of denials shown.

I wonder if those are people that just sign a name to the form with no backup and pray?

 

 

I think it's because VJ has a great support base of those learning from those that learned from those prior, etc etc.  You have to admit, this is a great place for no nonsense good advice and the guides are really handy.  But yeah, how many didn't put the time and effort and mailed off their 'entry' just expecting an automated approval?

[AnJ Co 1,676]

Just now, dkmfan85 said:

March 5th is a Sunday. You'll notice there are no other Sunday dates listed (12, 19, 26). Someone goofed filling out their timeline.

LOL  I messaged a VJ member recently asking 'How do you know you are going to be approved tomorrow?' after I saw the update in the timelines page.

 

They replied - 'It's xx date here, and my F just received the letter, so I put today'  They was 13 time zones ahead of ESDT and it really was 'tomorrow' there.  LOL   

 

So that's how a lot of things get mixed up on the user submitted data.

[twoDs 590]

1 minute ago, AnJ Co said:

What's your theory on all this?

-

I think it's because VJ has a great support base of those learning from those that learned from those prior, etc etc.  You have to admit, this is a great place for no nonsense good advice and the guides are really handy.  But yeah, how many didn't put the time and effort and mailed off their 'entry' just expecting an automated approval?

USCIS suspended premium processing on K1Bs due to backlog right around April 1 (they announced it on 4/5, I think.) My bet is (and the numbers seem to reflect this) there was a surge in filings, backlog started to rise, USCIS suspended premium processing and took staff off K1s and put them onto H1Bs or some other visa. The fact that USCIS just recently restarted premium H1B processing tells me they're comfortable with the backlog situation now, so either they picked up more staff, or the backlog is small enough that they could reassign people. Which all means March filers were really, really unlucky.

 

It really is staggering, though, when you realize just how few K1s there are in the overall scheme of things. We're like 0.5% of all visas issued. No surprise they don't care, all of us screaming in unison wouldn't even register on their radar. And literally a half-dozen people (or parts of people that add up to a half dozen, plus their supervisors) are handling all K1s for the entire country. You'd think they'd do a K1 expedite program just to fund another person or two.

 

VJ is rather remarkable, having 8% of all K1s captured is a very, very high number from a statistical viewpoint. It varies a lot by country when I looked into it (I think we have nearly 50% of Canadian K1 filers reporting in, but obviously the outlier countries have a very low participation rate.) We can basically take any number from VJ and mulitiply by 13 to figure out what's happening in all of USCIS.

[twoDs 590]

14 minutes ago, dkmfan85 said:

March 5th is a Sunday. You'll notice there are no other Sunday dates listed (12, 19, 26). Someone goofed filling out their timeline.

Good point. I think in generally there's a lot of low-level noise (confusion on NOA1 recieved v. notice dates, etc) in the data that makes specific dates fuzzy, but the errors probably don't amount to more than a day or two when they're averaged out.

[cherryblossoms916 216]

27 minutes ago, AnJ Co said:

I think it's because VJ has a great support base of those learning from those that learned from those prior, etc etc.  You have to admit, this is a great place for no nonsense good advice and the guides are really handy.  But yeah, how many didn't put the time and effort and mailed off their 'entry' just expecting an automated approval?

Do you think that VJ Timeline Processing is accurate now?

[Hurry&Wait 92]

6 minutes ago, cherryblossoms916 said:

Do you think that VJ Timeline Processing is accurate now?

I am constantly checking in now as it is 4 months (today) that we sent off our petition. I do not believe the dates are accurate as some have not got around to updating their timelines. Our estimated date has been "jumping around" for 6 weeks.

[cherryblossoms916 216]

17 minutes ago, Hurry&Wait said:

I am constantly checking in now as it is 4 months (today) that we sent off our petition. I do not believe the dates are accurate as some have not got around to updating their timelines. Our estimated date has been "jumping around" for 6 weeks.

Based on your timeline your case will be adjudicated this week. Actually we have the same timeline based on VJ. Hoping for us to hear something from them before July ends.