USCIS applications seem to be taking longer now and here's why!

[Pennycat 880]

On 8/18/2017 at 9:59 AM, RJandHamid said:

I figured it had something to do with increased demand and lack of staff. Hopefully they will get around to hiring and training new staff so that we can start to see processing times go down a bit.

 

Although historically, steps like NOA2 have taken 4+ months or longer (for K-1 visas at least). Looking at timelines from 2014-2015, the processing times are similar to current day. It it really interesting how in summer and fall of 2016, NOA2 was being processed in as little as 4 weeks! While I don't think USCIS will go back to processing that quickly anytime soon, what we all hope for is a more clear and efficient process. People would be less upset about having to wait if they could see progress being made (hey USCIS fix the online case status tracker please!) and not being left behind in the dark as they see cases 2 months ahead of theirs being approved. 

 

 

hey I know this is an old post but I was sifting through here trying to find something specific... anyway, I thought I'd chime in about the bolded part and how that happened and why that was super unusual.

 

Basically, when TSC and CSC were both processing applications, the petitions were routed based on what state the petitioner lived in, NOT what the existing workload and staffing levels at the Centers were (which was dumb). There must have been some internal shift at TSC away from the I-129fs and CSC staffed up because at some point (when I was waiting on NOA2), the VJ reported TSC average was 210 days (7 months) and the CSC 21 days (3 weeks!). Eventually, we kicked up a big enough fuss that they closed TSC to new applicants (left us all stranded there) and routed everyone to CSC. So for a good long time, 100% of I-129f petitions were flying through CSC while "the line" built up behind them. That's what you're looking at in all those timelines. Keep in mind that while that was happening (100% of new people flying through CSC) there were still thousands of people at TSC.

 

So I was a Feb 2015 filer, got NOA2 in Aug 2015. They made the change to all new folks routed to CSC in March 2015 (and I did consider canceling my first petition and applying again to get in that line!). So there were April 2015 filers who got their NOA2s in May 2015. And I, and a bunch of other people, still waited until August. That time period has weird statistics because of this