N-400 Filers who got stuck or delayed in Background / Name Check.

[luv2teach77 41]

4 minutes ago, casualuser said:

At some point it makes sense to hire a lawyer and start a legal action against USCIS. I heard that it does miracles with almost 100% reliability and almost immediately. But I thought 4 months is reasonable amount of time to initiate a service request and other inquiries. I am in Raleigh field office and they report processing times of January 9th as of June 30th, so USCIS will not have this usual excuse that their processing time is within normal range with this field office. Soon, I can place another request that my application is not within normal processing, harass ombudsman and in 2018 I could file a case in federal court if nothing happens. Still, I hope something will happen.

I have no intention of throwing any more money at this process than I already have.  I'll contact my state representatives before considering legal action.  Besides the annoyance of no updates, I'm not reliant on citizenship for anything in my near future so have the luxury of being able to wait it out.  I know that nothing immigration related ever sticks to rigid timelines so I'm gonna sit and wait for now.

[Happytobe 164]

3 hours ago, luv2teach77 said:

I've been at that point almost 9 months and it's just over 8 months since my biometrics appointment !!

Hang in there. Hopefully you'll get a response soon, and from your follow-up post, you've got you're head in the right place. As I've said before, we were not expecting anything much from the service request, so when the answer came, and we found out there was merit for it, we were ecstatic.  

[janadark 2]

15 hours ago, luv2teach77 said:

I've been at that point almost 9 months and it's just over 8 months since my biometrics appointment !!

I'm the same. A bit more than 8 months in fp scheduled status. Service request replied that my background check not cleared. No single violation all my life

[casualuser 38]

As of today my wife's case has been updated from fingerprint appointment scheduled (Apr 12) to "in-line". My case number which is just next to her is still in fingerprint appointment scheduled, that is: in the freezer.

 

Out of a few cases around our numbers about 50% of them have moved from fingerprint to in-line today. Interesting thing is that the only cases that did not move were those that had any pending or completed service requests. My case has a service request placed a week ago and it hasn't moved.

 

It appears that the applicants who really care (or are impatient) are more suspicious and require further background checks...

[luv2teach77 41]

1 minute ago, casualuser said:

As of today my wife's case has been updated from fingerprint appointment scheduled (Apr 12) to "in-line". My case number which is just next to her is still in fingerprint appointment scheduled, that is: in the freezer.

 

Out of a few cases around our numbers about 50% of them have moved from fingerprint to in-line today. Interesting thing is that the only cases that did not move were those that had any pending or completed service requests. My case has a service request placed a week ago and it hasn't moved.

 

It appears that the applicants who really care (or are impatient) are more suspicious and require further background checks...

I didn't place a service request for my case until it had been sitting for almost 7 months with no movement.  Based on that I'm not sure that service requests automatically mean further delays.  I felt mine was pretty delayed already.

[casualuser 38]

5 minutes ago, luv2teach77 said:

I didn't place a service request for my case until it had been sitting for almost 7 months with no movement.  Based on that I'm not sure that service requests automatically mean further delays.  I felt mine was pretty delayed already.

I think we do not have enough data points to make any definitive conclusions. It could be that there is no correlation between SR and a case movement or it depends on what is happening with the case. If it was somehow bureaucratically forgotten then it could speed it up. On the other hand I can imagine that SR might slow it down. Whether service requests appear suspicious, or someone is just mean and does it for fun, it is hard to say.

 

My bet is on "no correlation".

[Bahatj 4]

2 hours ago, casualuser said:

I think we do not have enough data points to make any definitive conclusions. It could be that there is no correlation between SR and a case movement or it depends on what is happening with the case. If it was somehow bureaucratically forgotten then it could speed it up. On the other hand I can imagine that SR might slow it down. Whether service requests appear suspicious, or someone is just mean and does it for fun, it is hard to say.

 

My bet is on "no correlation".

Any ideas on what's going with the Raleigh office? Im an April filer and was moved to In-line for Interview since end of June with no change since. My timeline is not bad but given what I see from other Raleigh filers, I'm wondering why the abnormal delays? Usually Raleigh is not that bad.

[luv2teach77 41]

Just a quick update.  I decided to reach out to my congressman's office in the hope that they can at least determine that there is no reason for the apparent holdup in my case besides the sheer volume of cases being processed.

 

I contacted his office last week, signed a privacy act release on Thursday and sent them copies of any and all notices related my case along with a detailed timeline of events.  I received a call from one of his staff this morning confirming a couple of details.  She said she would be reaching out to my local office today to try and get a status update.

 

I made it very clear when contacting them that I'm not requesting an expedite or to be processed out of order, I'm merely looking for some concrete information on where exactly my application is at in the process.  Hopefully I'll hear something back from them this week.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

[Happytobe 164]

4 minutes ago, luv2teach77 said:

Just a quick update.  I decided to reach out to my congressman's office in the hope that they can at least determine that there is no reason for the apparent holdup in my case besides the sheer volume of cases being processed.

 

I contacted his office last week, signed a privacy act release on Thursday and sent them copies of any and all notices related my case along with a detailed timeline of events.  I received a call from one of his staff this morning confirming a couple of details.  She said she would be reaching out to my local office today to try and get a status update.

 

I made it very clear when contacting them that I'm not requesting an expedite or to be processed out of order, I'm merely looking for some concrete information on where exactly my application is at in the process.  Hopefully I'll hear something back from them this week.

 

Thanks,

 

Mark

Hoping you get some kind of solid answer! 

[Lovenil 1]

Here is my theory.

 

USCIS does pick randomly close to 10% people for extended review.. Many of them would be cleared after 7-8 month. We just saw 2 people who had applied early dec ( beofre 15th dec) and had fingerprint early january placed in in-line in august. About my 10% theory, i have gone almost 20K cases up and down compare to our ( my and wife's) case number who are stucked in fingerpritn scheduled status since 9th January (Similar to luv2teach77).

 

I think in next month or so , many of the January 9th Fingerprint scheduled status files would get start clearing up as extended review files are processed in FIFO (First In First Out) timeline. So hold on tight!!! If one doesn't belong to so called "trouble zone" country and situation, would get cleared at 7-8 month after fingerprint scheduled status (similar to me). One caveat is , at end of dec filers, there are more than 40K applications filed before fee increase that may increase wait time.

 

 

[casualuser 38]

1 hour ago, Lovenil said:

Here is my theory.

 

USCIS does pick randomly close to 10% people for extended review.. Many of them would be cleared after 7-8 month. We just saw 2 people who had applied early dec ( beofre 15th dec) and had fingerprint early january placed in in-line in august. About my 10% theory, i have gone almost 20K cases up and down compare to our ( my and wife's) case number who are stucked in fingerpritn scheduled status since 9th January (Similar to luv2teach77).

 

I think in next month or so , many of the January 9th Fingerprint scheduled status files would get start clearing up as extended review files are processed in FIFO (First In First Out) timeline. So hold on tight!!! If one doesn't belong to so called "trouble zone" country and situation, would get cleared at 7-8 month after fingerprint scheduled status (similar to me). One caveat is , at end of dec filers, there are more than 40K applications filed before fee increase that may increase wait time.

 

 

I did a similar thing, but I went only through 250 cases that immediately follow mine. Around 6% was still in a fingerprint stage. Out of around 15 of them three were updated to inline last week (including mine). It seems that they just hang in there suspended since there is missing information from some agency somewhere and they process them as the information comes, maybe they iterate through all outstanding cases once per week.

Edited September 12, 2017 by casualuser
grammar correction

[Heidy1980 4]

On 3/23/2017 at 10:01 AM, Morningmist said:

I am waiting close to 2 months now after fingerprinting. My coworker who sits next to me and had his fingerprinting done a week before me is already in line for interview.

 

Morningmist......|07/31/13|12/28|01/10|01/11|02/03/17|--/--/--.|--/--/--.|--/--/--.|--/--/--.|Atlanta, GA........|NBC

 

GC:________07/31/13

N-400 sent:__12/28

Finger Prints:_02/03/17

USCIS Office: Atlanta, GA.

it really takes a while. Chicago is my USCIS office and here is my time line

 

August 6, 2016- send N400 application

August 7, 2016 - Priority Date

Septemner 2, 2016 - Biometric (Finger print)

May 2, 2017 - Interview (chicago)

May 5, 2017 - Case Approved! In line to schedule for Oath Ceremony.

Spet 22, 2017 - still no updates regarding when, where or when is my Oath Taking. 150 days has passed and still no updates, beside they approved my case and put me in line t schedule my Oath Ceremony.

[tijuana_brass 3]

I filed in December 2016 and I've been in "Fingerprint appointment scheduled" since January 9th, so I decided to take a look at some data today, which has made me feel (a little) better about the situation.

 

I checked 100 case numbers either side of mine and excluding those cases that were rejected for improper filing and a couple other minor categories the breakdown was:

 

Oath notice mailed/ceremony scheduled: 53 %

Fingerprint appointment scheduled: 31 %

Interview scheduled: 13 %

In-line for interview: 3 %

 

So there is a significant minority still in the fingerprint stage. Can't speak to how broadly applicable these stats are given that the USCIS gets ~3500 N400 applications every working day...

 

I also looked at overall USCIS performance for the past 4 years based on the stats from their website, and there has been a very significant increase in case backlog over the past year and a half so I think this delay may not be much more complicated than a very large workload leading to very extended processing times. Also seems like approvals start each FY low then pick up and peak in Q4 each year, so hopefully FY17 Q4 (Jul-Sep 2017) numbers show additional improvement and we'll all be done soon.

 

All that said, I also calculated when I should expect an interview based on the posted processing times for my FO and how far in advance of the interview the letter typically arrives, and you can be sure if that date come and goes with no letter I'll be on the phone to anyone who'll listen

 

 

 

[casualuser 38]

1 hour ago, tijuana_brass said:

I checked 100 case numbers either side of mine and excluding those cases that were rejected for improper filing and a couple other minor categories the breakdown was:

 

 

Good work and nice analysis! I posted a similar thing in the March 2017 thread. My focus was Raleigh. Your field office is quite busy and slow compared to Raleigh where my case is processed, so it could be that it is entirely backlog-related problem, not background checks. Also, my experience shows that the online status for paper-based applications is not reliable and not always updated.

 

I also entered around ~250 cases that follow my case but it was only around 4-6% still in "fingerprint appointment scheduled". I do not understand why your numbers show it is almost a third.

Edited September 22, 2017 by casualuser

[Villanelle 4,122]

There are a few theories here but I am confident there is no conspiracy going on. Back in 2008 (ish) the background check system was so backlogged it was causing a delay of 1-3 years (for most applicants). Theyve since picked up and slowed down again. It happens. You do realize the name check covers your name as spelled, your name phonetically, and any variation of your name. If something comes back - even a mention they have to review the files. Its a huge time consuming process.