I STRONGLY encourage you NOT to pay immigrant fee online

[dboeger1 4]

I realize my wife is only 1 case, but being a software engineer, I know a little bit about bugs, such as race conditions, non-guaranteed transactions, etc. There is something clearly not right with the online immigrant payment site, and it may be rare, but it is absolutely a pain to deal with, and not worth the convenience at all. Let me explain.

 

My wife immigrated from China with a CR-1 visa on February 12th, 2017. I forgot to pay her $220 immigrant fee until the day before her arrival, February 11th, 2017. But I did still pay it online before she arrived, hoping that it wouldn't delay her green card processing. When I filled out the form and clicked "Submit", the site froze; it was stuck "loading" the next page for about 30 minutes, but nothing appeared to happen. After waiting for 30 minutes to make sure it wasn't just slow, I closed the browser and logged back in. The site said I still hadn't paid her immigrant fee. So I submitted the form again, and the 2nd time, it processed correctly and loaded the next page, giving me a confirmation with receipt number (IOE) and everything. I thought everything was fine.

 

The next day, I got an email from my credit card saying I was charged the $220 fee twice. I checked, and sure enough, there were 2 charges. Apparently, the 1st submission charged my credit card, but never made any record of me having paid. I didn't want to dispute the charge through my credit card right away, because of course, I cared most about my wife getting her green card. So I spent many hours over the next few weeks speaking with USCIS over the phone, and seemingly nobody was able to help. They all kept saying the same thing, that they have no record or knowledge of payments, only the status of the green card processing.

 

Finally, I spoke to someone who said another department would contact me by email 2 weeks later asking for the evidence of the double charge so they could process a refund. About 2 weeks later, I got an email from the Texas Service Center asking for some generic case information, but nothing related to the double charge. I'm guessing some information was lost in transit. I replied with the information they requested, and received an automated reply saying the information was forwarded to the appropriate officer and I would be contacted soon. I never received a reply to this day.

 

At that point, my wife had already received her green card. So having exhausted my reasonable options, I disputed the 1st charge through my credit card, figuring I at least had proof of the 2nd payment. I didn't hear anything for over a month, so I thought that was the end of it. USCIS had kept telling me there was no record of the 1st charge, so I figured there was no way to link it to our case. Unfortunately, after about 1 month, we received an invoice in the mail from USCIS Financial Operations in Burlington, Vermont. Not only did it say we had stopped the payment and now owed an additional $30 returned-check fee, but the amount was incorrect. It said we owed the $30 + $440 instead of the correct $220 amount for the immigrant fee. So clearly something got really messed up in the system when I submitted the 1st payment and it never loaded the next page, because it doubled the amount. I thought about disputing the 2nd charge at that point and just getting the amount corrected to $220 before doing anything else, but I figured that was pushing our luck with the validity of my wife's green card.

 

So I got to contacting USCIS and Financial Operations back and forth over the next few weeks, and it was more frustrating than when I originally contacted USCIS to resolve the double charge. They both kept saying the same thing. USCIS insisted that they do not handle payments, so they have no records of double charges whatsoever, only the status of green card processing, which in our case showed up as complete. Financial Operations kept insisting that they had absolutely no authorization to void charges without permission from USCIS, because they only handle payments. Slowly, I learned the truth that these are effectively 2 completely separate departments. In fact, 1 guy in Vermont told me that they're not even technically USCIS, but ICE, and they just do collections for several other agencies, including USCIS.

 

This is when it became apparent to me the fatal flaw in the design of the payment process. I'm pretty sure this is why I got charged twice. When you submit the payment form online, the information probably gets sent to USCIS systems first, to link it to your case. Then, the payment request gets sent to Financial Operations, and they charge your credit card. Finally, Financial Operations sends a confirmation back to USCIS to say it was successful, and USCIS marks your fee as paid. However, this is not designed as an atomic, consistent operation. Meaning that the overall system cannot roll back unfinished transactions. So if the transaction fails during the process, nothing is resolved. In my case, Financial Operations charged my credit card, but there was probably some connection error that prevented them from sending the confirmation to USCIS, so as far as USCIS was concerned, I was never charged, which is why I had to pay a 2nd time.

 

An analogy for those not technically minded would be walking into a store, and instead of collecting your payment at the register, an associate collects your money at the rack where you buy your items, and takes it to the register. But as you’re walking out of the store, the cashier says they haven’t received your payment yet, and the associate says they don’t remember why they took your money, only that you needed to pay. At that point, there’s effectively no way to prove to either of them that you paid, because they have no recollection. That’s why you don’t build online systems like this. Well, some sites do, but they typically have some incentive to rectify the situation. For example, Amazon is widely known to have an “eventually-consistent” shopping cart in order to enhance site availability on a global scale. This means that you can be communicating with different data centers during your online shopping in case there’s a faulty connection or some other problem, but what you see in your checkout is not necessarily what you’re actually buying. So you can be charged the incorrect amount or sent the wrong items. However, Amazon knows this, and their customer service fixes the charges and doesn’t request items back, so the customer often ends up with free stuff as a result.

 

Clearly, USCIS has no financial incentive to keep happy customers, so they have no process or staff trained for dealing with this. Someone on the phone at USCIS told me to schedule an InfoPass appointment at the local office. At that point, I started to get a little mean with her and told her I don’t have the luxury that they do of going back and forth, because at some point, my wife’s green card status is going to be at risk, and I can’t have that after the long process we went through to get her here. She insisted that the supervisor at the local office could help me if I showed the evidence. A week later, I went to the appointment, and the guy there probably wasn’t a supervisor, and he just ended up saying the same thing, that as far as USCIS was concerned, we were done because we had my wife’s green card.

 

So I called Financial Operations again and insisted that they contact USCIS on my behalf, because apparently, the only way to make any kind of progress was to have them communicate with each other to get authorization to void the charge. Thankfully, someone in the office was willing to do that if I faxed them the evidence. So I faxed a fairly substantial packet of evidence showing the history of both charges and my contact with both offices. Finally, today, May 11^th, 2017, exactly 3 months after paying my wife’s immigrant fee, and well after getting her green card, the issue is resolved. The invoice has been voided. I have spent about 60 hours in total dealing with this issue in that time.

 

One thing you learn as a software engineer is that bugs like this may seem rare in development, but when operating at scale, they always come back to bite you. We may be the first ones this has happened to. From searching on VisaJourney, I have not found a similar story. But if the system continues to operate the way it does, it will happen again, sooner or later, and put someone’s green card at risk. It is for this reason that I highly recommend paying by mail. In the end, it may go through the same electronic system with the same bug. But at the very least, it will happen to someone at USCIS, and the responsibility will fall on them to deal with it. While I normally wouldn’t trust a USCIS employee with my spare change let alone dealing with a bug in their system, they at least have a much clearer path of contacting Financial Operations to void the invoice than the customer does of having to call back and forth to get answers. Just make sure to keep extensive records of whatever you send to them when paying by mail, because there’s a good chance you will need to prove you have paid.

[Tanish 197]

Thank you for the detailed analysis. This is something really helpful.

[lunchboxthermos 1]

ugh!!  i think i've run into the same issue!

 

i went to the uscis site to pay the immigration fee, and all was well until i entered my bank info (i was afraid to charge using my credit card based on your story).  same thing happened - i hit submit, and then it was just "loading" for 10 minutes, then finally it said "this site can't be reached.  www.pay.gov took too long to respond"

 

what should i do??

[dboeger1 4]

15 hours ago, lunchboxthermos said:

ugh!!  i think i've run into the same issue!

 

i went to the uscis site to pay the immigration fee, and all was well until i entered my bank info (i was afraid to charge using my credit card based on your story).  same thing happened - i hit submit, and then it was just "loading" for 10 minutes, then finally it said "this site can't be reached.  www.pay.gov took too long to respond"

 

what should i do??

Hello, sorry to hear you might have run into this problem. Again, this was all very new to me and is clearly a flaw in the design of their web site, so it's hard for me to say with certainty what the best approach is. However, I will offer my best advice.

 

First off, check your bank account and see if you were actually charged. That was really the main issue for me, that I was charged without it registering that I had paid the fee. If you weren't charged at all, then it was probably just a routine connection error and nothing bad happened, so you can go ahead and try again. Of course, I would recommend paying by mail if possible, because of what I know now, but it really just depends on you. Also, if you must pay online, I recommend credit card. The reason is that if you do end up having to dispute the charge later on as a last resort like I did, it is much easier to do with a credit card than a bank account. Credit card companies are pretty ruthless in cancelling charges and will refund you the money pretty much immediately, and I believe they are also considered safer because they don't share personal info as part of transactions. So in general, credit cards are relatively safe ways of paying online.

 

If you were charged, then log back in and see what it says. Once the system recognizes that you've paid, it won't let you pay again, it'll say something like you've already paid. So maybe you were charged and the page didn't load, but it still successfully updated your case status. In that case, at least the case is fine, but you still have a problem, which is that you're supposed to get a confirmation page with an IOE number, which is basically your receipt number. I'm not sure how easy it will be to get that, but you should really make sure to get it. That's because USCIS treats different parts of the process as different cases, and the 3 letters are the case type. So for example, when you submitted the original I-130, you got a USCIS case number. Then it went to NVC, and when it went to the consulate after, it got a different case number. Finally, the issuance of the green card is considered a 3rd separate case, and the IOE number is the case number for that. So if you call for help and they ask for a case number, your other case numbers won't help. You need the IOE case number to check the status of the green card. Unfortunately, USCIS never explains the terminology clearly, so it can get confusing if you don't understand that. If you don't have your IOE number because you never got a confirmation page, but the site says you paid, then you will need to get it somehow. There are other VJ topics about how to do that.

 

Finally, if it did charge your account, but the site says you still haven't paid, then yes, I'm afraid you have the same problem I did. There are 2 ways to go about it.

 

The first thing I would try is not to submit the payment again. Instead, call USCIS or schedule an infopass appointment with the local office, and show them the evidence that you were charged. Hopefully they will be able to just update your case to say you have paid. That is because they have no records of payment, they only manage the actual case status, so if you can show that you paid, somebody with authority at USCIS may be able to manually update your case status and issue the green card. They made this sound easy, but this is not what I did, so if you choose to do this, you'll be in uncharted territory, as I don't know how it will go.

 

The second approach, which is pretty ugly and what I did, so I wouldn't recommend it, but at least I could help more with the details, is to just submit the payment a 2nd time. Hopefully it goes through and you get a confirmation page. Then you should have 2 identical charges on your account, but at least your case will be updated and you should get the green card in a few weeks. At that point, I would cancel the 1st charge through your credit card. Unfortunately, you didn't use credit card, so I don't know how this works through your bank account. Therefore, I recommend checking your banks process on disputing charges before attempting this method. Once you've disputed the 1st charge, after some weeks, you will probably get an invoice saying you stopped the payment and now owe money. If it's like my case, the invoice amount will also be completely wrong, haha.  At that point, you have to call the number on the invoice for financial operations in Vermont. They would be the only ones who could help at that point. The regular USCIS number won't help. You then have to convince someone at financial operations to let you fax them the proof that you've already paid, and they have to contact USCIS to get authorization to void the invoice for you. Keep in mind that your green card status may be at risk during this process. I'm not sure what would happen if the invoice due date passed and the issue wasn't resolved yet. According to the guy at my infopass appointment, he said it wouldn't be a problem with the current green card, but when we went to remove the conditional status in 2 years, they would see we owed money and not issue the new card. That may or may not be true, it's just what I was told.

 

So yeah, hopefully it's not a big deal and you weren't charged and you can just try again. But if you were charged and the case wasn't updated, then yeah, it's gonna get ugly before it gets better unfortunately. I hope all is well, and please do reply if you need more help.

[JessieABC 159]

20 hours ago, lunchboxthermos said:

ugh!!  i think i've run into the same issue!

 

i went to the uscis site to pay the immigration fee, and all was well until i entered my bank info (i was afraid to charge using my credit card based on your story).  same thing happened - i hit submit, and then it was just "loading" for 10 minutes, then finally it said "this site can't be reached.  www.pay.gov took too long to respond"

 

what should i do??

Please let us know what happens so the rest of us are better informed!

 

@dboeger1 Thanks for sharing your experience.  It's definitely something that could help the rest of us when we reach that step.  I guess I should submit the payment well before my husband flies over to give some slack time in between.

[lunchboxthermos 1]

this is frustrating.  the page doesn't even load properly!

 

i can type in the alien #, and the case #.  it shows up with the intended fee.  then i click continue, and it takes me to the payer contact info page.  i fill it all out.  and then when i hit submit, it just loads and loads and then times out.  it doesn't even let me get to the payment page anymore!  frustrating.  i've tried it multiple times, and on different internet browsers - same result.  sometimes it doesn't even let me get to that first payer contact info page!!!  grrr.  i don't see anywhere where it has information about mailing in payment?  i live overseas, and we're due to be back in the states with visa packet in hand on june 1st! 

[dboeger1 4]

14 minutes ago, lunchboxthermos said:

this is frustrating.  the page doesn't even load properly!

 

i can type in the alien #, and the case #.  it shows up with the intended fee.  then i click continue, and it takes me to the payer contact info page.  i fill it all out.  and then when i hit submit, it just loads and loads and then times out.  it doesn't even let me get to the payment page anymore!  frustrating.  i've tried it multiple times, and on different internet browsers - same result.  sometimes it doesn't even let me get to that first payer contact info page!!!  grrr.  i don't see anywhere where it has information about mailing in payment?  i live overseas, and we're due to be back in the states with visa packet in hand on june 1st! 

I don't think you can pay by mail before arriving. However, at the port of entry upon arrival, if you haven't paid, you will get a page saying you have a certain number of days to pay, and I believe that gives you the option to pay by mail. So basically the payment isn't really due until some time after arrival. However, green card processing won't start until you pay the fee, so you want to pay it as early as possible to avoid delaying the green card. The site may just not work very well outside of the US. I think it's really intended to be used by sponsors from within the US. I'm not too sure. If you're really having a lot of trouble paying online, I would just wait and pay after arrival based on the sheet they give you.

[lunchboxthermos 1]

21 minutes ago, dboeger1 said:

I don't think you can pay by mail before arriving. However, at the port of entry upon arrival, if you haven't paid, you will get a page saying you have a certain number of days to pay, and I believe that gives you the option to pay by mail. So basically the payment isn't really due until some time after arrival. However, green card processing won't start until you pay the fee, so you want to pay it as early as possible to avoid delaying the green card. The site may just not work very well outside of the US. I think it's really intended to be used by sponsors from within the US. I'm not too sure. If you're really having a lot of trouble paying online, I would just wait and pay after arrival based on the sheet they give you.

you were right!  i just rang my sister and asked her to try it for me; gave her all my info via skype call and it went through fast and quick!

 

so heads up to all non-US people trying to pay immigrant fee on uscis-elis site - if it's not working for you, have a family member do it for you Stateside.  

 

what a relief! 

[NikLR 13,232]

~~moved to general immigration discussion from IR1/CR1 process and procedures.  IR1/CR1 are not the only people who have to pay the new immigrant fee.~~

 

In reality the payment isn't due for 1 year after arrival.  Before then you have your endorsed visa which becomes a temporary green card valid for 1 year.  Most people feel that paying before arrival will get them their card faster.  However I have seen people that wait a few months, and get their card in a week after paying.  It's up to you. 

[ILUVINDIA 6]

On 5/20/2017 at 10:15 PM, NikLR said:

~~moved to general immigration discussion from IR1/CR1 process and procedures.  IR1/CR1 are not the only people who have to pay the new immigrant fee.~~

 

In reality the payment isn't due for 1 year after arrival.  Before then you have your endorsed visa which becomes a temporary green card valid for 1 year.  Most people feel that paying before arrival will get them their card faster.  However I have seen people that wait a few months, and get their card in a week after paying.  It's up to you. 

Does anyone know how can one pay the green card fee before entering USA? Our relatives reached USA over a month ago in F4 visa. Nothing was mention about $220 greencard fee at the time of the interview nor at the time they enter USA. They were told at the airport the green card will be mail to you at the address what was on there DS230. Today they received a letter saying to pay $220 or you won't get your green card. 

Another relative family of our is in process of getting their visa f3. Can someone tell me how can they pay the $220 before entering USA so they won't have to wait for their for over a month cause if fee not paid.  

[IowacityGuy 152]

On 9/11/2017 at 9:49 PM, ILUVINDIA said:

Does anyone know how can one pay the green card fee before entering USA? Our relatives reached USA over a month ago in F4 visa. Nothing was mention about $220 greencard fee at the time of the interview nor at the time they enter USA. They were told at the airport the green card will be mail to you at the address what was on there DS230. Today they received a letter saying to pay $220 or you won't get your green card. 

Another relative family of our is in process of getting their visa f3. Can someone tell me how can they pay the $220 before entering USA so they won't have to wait for their for over a month cause if fee not paid.  

I paid my green card fees online when I was in delhi. I never had any issue and received my green in three weeks after entering United States. look for Elis and register with them. make sure you put the right information while you register with them. print the recipt at the end