N-400 April 2020 Filers

[Chad&Ashleigh 7]

21 hours ago, millefleur said:

Keep hanging in there. By GC extension do you mean I-551 stamp? I'm surprized you were able to go in at all given covid. Did you schedule the infopass via phone?

Yes the i-551 stamp. Yes I called in to schedule the infopass appointment and they called me back the next day with my appointment time. I kind of wish they would have just waived it but then I would have no documentation at all to be legally in the country and driver's license would expire etc so I guess they have to do those appointments. I have been patiently waiting for so long and now my patience is wearing out 🤣

Edited January 29, 2021 by Chad&Ashleigh

[millefleur 5,046]

My husband called USCIS today, we used the method here mentioned in this thread: https://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/753944-how-to-talk-to-a-person-at-uscis-customer-service-edited-title/

 

Wait was about 15 minutes on hold before getting a person on the line, then finally a person answered. My husband asked what was going on, if his case had been transferred to the new field office and when a biometrics notice would be sent out. The USCIS rep said they need to "check", put him on a brief hold, then confirmed that the case had indeed been transferred to the new field office. Regarding biometrics, she just gave the same old, same old spiel about the backlog, USCIS working at lowered capacity due to Covid, and basically just keep waiting.

 

The weirdest part was, she mentioned an option being physically mailing a letter to the local field office, asking them to reuse biometrics?? She read us the address over the phone and just said to "find a template" online of a similar letter and physically mail it in. I don't know if anyone else has every heard of anything like this? It seems frankly ludicrous to me that mailing an unsolicited letter to the field office would do anything. I also attempted searching for this "template" or example of such a letter and did not find anything. I don't really know what to think of it. 🤷‍♀️ It seemed to be like she just made up this advice on the spot, has anyone ever heard of this before?

[sweetadams 138]

8 hours ago, millefleur said:

My husband called USCIS today, we used the method here mentioned in this thread: https://www.visajourney.com/forums/topic/753944-how-to-talk-to-a-person-at-uscis-customer-service-edited-title/

 

Wait was about 15 minutes on hold before getting a person on the line, then finally a person answered. My husband asked what was going on, if his case had been transferred to the new field office and when a biometrics notice would be sent out. The USCIS rep said they need to "check", put him on a brief hold, then confirmed that the case had indeed been transferred to the new field office. Regarding biometrics, she just gave the same old, same old spiel about the backlog, USCIS working at lowered capacity due to Covid, and basically just keep waiting.

 

The weirdest part was, she mentioned an option being physically mailing a letter to the local field office, asking them to reuse biometrics?? She read us the address over the phone and just said to "find a template" online of a similar letter and physically mail it in. I don't know if anyone else has every heard of anything like this? It seems frankly ludicrous to me that mailing an unsolicited letter to the field office would do anything. I also attempted searching for this "template" or example of such a letter and did not find anything. I don't really know what to think of it. 🤷‍♀️ It seemed to be like she just made up this advice on the spot, has anyone ever heard of this before?

I think you should give it a shot, draft a letter requesting a biometric reuse stating conversation with USCIS Customer Rep (whom I want to assume here is a tier 2 officer). You have nothing to loose, maybe it will spur someone in the field office to act on your case.

[millefleur 5,046]

5 hours ago, sweetadams said:

I think you should give it a shot, draft a letter requesting a biometric reuse stating conversation with USCIS Customer Rep (whom I want to assume here is a tier 2 officer). You have nothing to loose, maybe it will spur someone in the field office to act on your case.

I'm thinking about it. I guess just send a normal letter or maybe a certified letter? I wish she had named someone to address it to.

[sweetadams 138]

6 hours ago, millefleur said:

I'm thinking about it. I guess just send a normal letter or maybe a certified letter? I wish she had named someone to address it to.

A certified letter address to the director of the field office will be my opinion. 

[Scandi 4,166]

On 1/30/2021 at 10:59 AM, millefleur said:

I'm thinking about it. I guess just send a normal letter or maybe a certified letter? I wish she had named someone to address it to.

Always worth a try. I didn't really have any hopes that messaging them via my online account would work, but it does seem like it made a difference. I had the biometrics appointment on January 27, and today they scheduled my interview. It's moving fast now. 🙈

[sweetadams 138]

1 hour ago, Scandi said:

Always worth a try. I didn't really have any hopes that messaging them via my online account would work, but it does seem like it made a difference. I had the biometrics appointment on January 27, and today they scheduled my interview. It's moving fast now. 🙈

Congratulation Scandi, your case getting traction is a good thing. Lucky you

[Scandi 4,166]

1 hour ago, sweetadams said:

Congratulation Scandi, your case getting traction is a good thing. Lucky you

Thank you. I was expecting to wait a lot longer, but it seems as if USCIS has a huge mess now because of the lockdowns and the cases are not being worked on in the order they came in anymore. So while many people from late 2019 are still waiting, USCIS is now picking up cases from those who filed in July 2020, same field office and everything. 🙄

[ThaOne 101]

3 hours ago, Scandi said:

Always worth a try. I didn't really have any hopes that messaging them via my online account would work, but it does seem like it made a difference. I had the biometrics appointment on January 27, and today they scheduled my interview. It's moving fast now. 🙈

So you are confirming now that contacting them via your online account just like leaving them additional info online as I did, could have been the trigger to get something moving on your case now?

[Scandi 4,166]

6 minutes ago, ThaOne said:

So you are confirming now that contacting them via your online account just like leaving them additional info online as I did, could have been the trigger to get something moving on your case now?

No not at all. I have continously been uploading new documents since I filed in May 2020, at least something new each month. It did absolutely nothing. I also sent them messages asking to get a biometrics appontment and that only generated the regular generic answers like "you're in line, you just have to wait", so that did absolutely nothing either. It wasn't until I "threatened" them with contacting the ombudsman that they scheduled my biometrics. 

 

So no, neither uploads or regular nice messages did a single thing for me.

[ThaOne 101]

8 minutes ago, Scandi said:

No not at all. I have continously been uploading new documents since I filed in May 2020, at least something new each month. It did absolutely nothing. I also sent them messages asking to get a biometrics appontment and that only generated the regular generic answers like "you're in line, you just have to wait", so that did absolutely nothing either. It wasn't until I "threatened" them with contacting the ombudsman that they scheduled my biometrics. 

 

So no, neither uploads or regular nice messages did a single thing for me.

Great. Whatever it is you got what you sought. Maybe your officer responds best to threats and others to kind messages, and others to new uploads...

Edited February 1, 2021 by ThaOne

[millefleur 5,046]

On 2/1/2021 at 1:28 PM, ThaOne said:

Great. Whatever it is you got what you sought. Maybe your officer responds best to threats and others to kind messages, and others to new uploads...

Haha, I know.....I just sent another message to the inbox mentioning the congressman/ombudsman because they never replied to my other message. Let's see if anything happens. 

[ThaOne 101]

13 minutes ago, millefleur said:

Haha, I know.....I just sent another message to the inbox mentioning the congressman/ombudsman because they never replied to my other message. Let's see if anything happens. 

I truly hope you guys get a resolution soon and you too never have to deal with all this back and forth anymore soon. It is especially difficult for applicants to understand and all this is USCIS's own doing. If they just gave the appropriate responses and reasons for delays on cases instead of generic responses, people would know and stop calling and trying to get more answers and waste everyone including their time. For instance if someone filed in May 2020 in a specific field office, and has no response, yet sees that someone else from the same office filed in August and is already done, of course the May, March, February or earlier filers will start asking questions. USCIS should give correct answers, i.e, background check not completed, more documents are needed... because otherwise the backlog response doesn't hold up, because if it were just a backlog issue, they shouldn't be dealing with someone who filed in August before someone who filed in April.

But based on what I read somewhere here back in July or so, and I already pointed out in some of my other posts, the way officers are assigned cases is not like when you go to, let's say the DMV where you take a ticket with a number, and when that number shows up you just walk to the next available agent. Each officers receive a whole batch of applications. So two officers in one office can get let's say 10 applications the same day. One officer may go through his ten at a faster rate than the other, for various reasons, i.e, he is faster, had cases to review that were more straight forward, less attached documents to review, didn't take a sick day or two, is not as lazy as the other one... I just read that somewhere here and don't know if that is true, but it would be a good explanation as to why within the same office people who even apply the same week can get such different outcomes.

Hopefully soon you shall see the light. But definitely try writing to the Ombudsman if that window has opened. At this point everything you try can only help move things along. It can't hurt.  

[millefleur 5,046]

1 hour ago, ThaOne said:

If they just gave the appropriate responses and reasons for delays on cases instead of generic responses, people would know and stop calling and trying to get more answers and waste everyone including their time

Totally agree. By giving generic answers, they just create more bottleneck in their customer service centers of people asking the same questions over and over.

 

1 hour ago, ThaOne said:

Each officers receive a whole batch of applications. So two officers in one office can get let's say 10 applications the same day. One officer may go through his ten at a faster rate than the other, for various reasons, i.e, he is faster, had cases to review that were more straight forward, less attached documents to review, didn't take a sick day or two, is not as lazy as the other one..

This is the only thing I can think of is the explanation. For the Chicago local office, myself and @keyuree1 (May filer) are sitting around with no updates at all since the initial case receipt, meanwhile Chicago filers from August and even October have already had their interviews. I wouldn't be surprized if both of our cases were sitting right now on some slow (or absentee) worker's desk, way at the bottom of the pile.

[Scandi 4,166]

24 minutes ago, millefleur said:

Totally agree. By giving generic answers, they just create more bottleneck in their customer service centers of people asking the same questions over and over.

 

This is the only thing I can think of is the explanation. For the Chicago local office, myself and @keyuree1 (May filer) are sitting around with no updates at all since the initial case receipt, meanwhile Chicago filers from August and even October have already had their interviews. I wouldn't be surprized if both of our cases were sitting right now on some slow (or absentee) worker's desk, way at the bottom of the pile.

I read somewhere a post by someone who claimed to work at USCIS, he said that because of the closures in 2020, there's a total mess at USCIS right now and nothing is in order anymore. He urged people to nag USCIS for appointments as they're not doing things in the order the applications came in anymore (before the pandemic they at least did it somewhat in the correct order). I obviously don't know the validity of that post, but it was interesting to read.

 

And we do see some evidence of that, here in Los Angeles several July 2020 filers have gotten their interview appointments while people from late 2019 are still waiting.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Scandi