JUNE 2021 I-129F K-1 FILERS

[Nuba 57]

I attended this webinar. They reconfirmed commitment to the target cycle times for end of fiscal 2023. They addressed efforts to improve processing times on certain visas. Nothing on K-1 or CR-1. A nothingburger for this forum.

[gooblue 50]

10 minutes ago, Nuba said:

I attended this webinar. They reconfirmed commitment to the target cycle times for end of fiscal 2023. They addressed efforts to improve processing times on certain visas. Nothing on K-1 or CR-1. A nothingburger for this forum.

To be honest I sympathize, here are details from the webinar notes I took:

 

So First up: USCIS backlog:

• 8.5 million cases pending
• 5.2 million are considered backlog           (does this imply k1 cases within 13 months are not considered backlog?)

 

Initiatives at a high level

• reusing biometrics
• video interviews
• social distancing "innovative solutions"   (why is this still a thing?)
• drive through oath ceremonies

 

Staffing Changes:

• The congressional funding allocated for USCIS(couple months ago) is being used for:
• paying overtime
• focusing on getting new staff
• first increase is mostly promotions and HR increases(someone correct me if I heard this wrong?)
• They finished off this section saying they are "now starting to get external hires"

 

The cycle times were mentioned, they didn't change from when they revealed them in the MAY webinar. (by end of 2023, i129-f form should be processed in 6 months - we are currently still seeing 13 month+)

 

Premium Processing Updates:

• still not available for everyone due to lack of adjudicators <- due to requirement of not slowing down normal processing of non premium filers AKA they'd need new adjudicators to just do premium processing without losing old adjudicators
• on above note, they said they are trying to hire more adjudicators

 

At this point they made points on increasing work permit validity/ead extensions/more work visa related flexibility/etc...

 

Technological Solutions  - in this section they mentioned tech improvements to help streamline the processes in general

• Moving non-adjudicator work to non adjudicator work (I think they mean that some of the work adjudicators do isn't actually necessary to be done by adjudicators, ie: simple tasks, and that they were spreading the load so adjudicators could focus on adjudicator specific work - hooray for us in theory)
• Reassigning officers handling routine questions to adjudications -> Think this means theyll have less people answering questions(ie: support) and moving them to adjudication(again Hooray for us in theory)
• Replacing ministritative work/validation with system. -> they "system" should handle more work ie in theory less workload for adjudicators by freeing up work they actually have to do(hooray for us in theory)
• Remote office to office interviews -> They mentioned officers at one location could video interview applicants at another interview to spread load -> I think this is more relevant to naturalization and local processes(irrelevant to us unless causes less adjudications somehow)
• Digitizing files to enable virtual processing/adjudication (Will this apply to RFEs we get so we can respond immediately and not have to wait for mail and mail back? Other than that this may be too slow for people who already filed and not be relevant, less someone scans everyone's pending forms)
• Increasing forms for online filing (see my comment above)

 

Last section was questions:  (this was a little disappointing as they didn't answer my chatbox question nor give me a chance to phone in as time ran out)

Notable answers:

• File retrieval backlog should be gone by July 2022(relevant to naturalization people, and as these backlogs clear people will be freed to work on more relevant stuff to us, again in theory)
• There was a question about where to reach out for people in weird limbo situations -> they didn't really give an answer it seemed

 

Questions I wanted to ask:

Considering Cycle goals by 2023, is there any chance we start to see an improvement soon/by end of 2022?

Will rfes be answerable online any time soon? (hopefully relevant to all of us waiting for  case to get touched and deal with rfe quickly if it comes)

 

 

And that it

 

[Nuba 57]

28 minutes ago, gooblue said:

...

Questions I wanted to ask:

Considering Cycle goals by 2023, is there any chance we start to see an improvement soon/by end of 2022?

 

...

 

Given that their fiscal year is October and their cycle time target for I129F is 6  months you'd think there should be some significant progress by end of calendar 2022..  However, carefully analyzing the detailed daily runs by month posted in this subforum, it is clear that 80th per centile time they quote is still slipping, although at a slower rate..  The milestone for all us waiters is when the derivative changes sign.  (I am a data dude) .

 

As a November filer I heard nothing today that improves my hope of getting NOA2 before end of 2022.

 

[gooblue 50]

8 minutes ago, Nuba said:

 

Given that their fiscal year is October and their cycle time target for I129F is 6  months you'd think there should be some significant progress by end of calendar 2022..  However, carefully analyzing the detailed daily runs by month posted in this subforum, it is clear that 80th per centile time they quote is still slipping, although at a slower rate..  The milestone for all us waiters is when the derivative changes sign.  (I am a data dude) .

 

As a November filer I heard nothing today that improves my hope of getting NOA2 before end of 2022.

 

Could I get some details as to how you arrive at your data?

[Display Name2 221]

Here is a graph of how things have been going the past months. It gives a rough overview of how the processing speed is going at the moment. 

Note:

 This only counts Approvals. denials/withdrawals/etc are not counted, so the real progress is slightly higher).

 At the start of the chart they are processing March cases - those approvals are obviously not shown in the chart.

 

Let's do some napkin math:

From WAC2190069000 to WAC2190116500 there is 4615 I-129f cases with status 'Case Was Received'.

Let's pretend that they do 50 approvals each day. (this might be a little pessimistic, but I need to pick a number)

 

4615 / 50 = 92.3

 

By this logic with the current speed, the last filer in June is 93 working days from being approved. 

 

 

 

 

From WAC2190069000 to WAC2190130000 there is 9260 I-129f cases with status 'Case Was Received'.

Let's pretend that they do 50 approvals each day.

 

9260 / 50 = 185.2

 

By this logic with the current speed, the last filer in august is 186 working days from being approved. 

Of course, don't take these kinds of estimates as very valuable - just use it to get a general idea.

 

 

 

 

[BBBJ 59]

Wait, I'm in 110000 range and I'm a July 9th filer. Something is not right with either first range you put or the number of cases? There's almost 3k july cases up to 116500 range. Or am I missing something? 

 

*you probably meant 106500. 

Edited June 22, 2022 by JankoB

[Display Name2 221]

33 minutes ago, JankoB said:

Wait, I'm in 110000 range and I'm a July 9th filer. Something is not right with either first range you put or the number of cases? There's almost 3k july cases up to 116500 range. Or am I missing something? 

 

*you probably meant 106500. 

The receipt numbers generally will be ordered sequentially based on the date they were received, but there are smaller and larger deviations. 

For numbers 107000 or greater there are 15 cases that was received in June and 1 in May. 

 

I filtered out all the July cases - so those are not counted in the 'june' math.

 

Edited June 22, 2022 by Display Name2

[Optimist19 775]

6 hours ago, Xiaova said:

I saw this article that they are transferring H-1B cases to the California center:

 

https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/uscis-transfers-certain-h-1b-petitions-to-the-california-service-center

 

Not sure if it will affect the K1 processing times.

I'm hoping these are just completely different officers so we don't take another hit....

Edited June 22, 2022 by Optimist19

[Optimist19 775]

2 hours ago, Nuba said:

 

Given that their fiscal year is October and their cycle time target for I129F is 6  months you'd think there should be some significant progress by end of calendar 2022..  However, carefully analyzing the detailed daily runs by month posted in this subforum, it is clear that 80th per centile time they quote is still slipping, although at a slower rate..  The milestone for all us waiters is when the derivative changes sign.  (I am a data dude) .

 

As a November filer I heard nothing today that improves my hope of getting NOA2 before end of 2022.

 

I did post a question in their Q&A chat box and tried to ask on the line about when exactly are they expecting this sign change. With this 6 month goal, we expect them to start speeding up at some point, but when is this point?? I mentioned that the timeline has only increased since these new goals were announced. But, they didn't answer anything about the I-129F 😊 It seems we're too small of a crowd. It seems to me that they need more resources to ever get to this 6 month goal, which might take some more time still. Maybe that's their plan though--to hire more then get to the 6 months.

[Xiaova 1,480]

End of day update for June:

 

96000: 1 Expedite(Denied: 1) (1 new / 0 in progress)
96500: 1 Withdrawal (1 new / 0 in progress)
102000: 1 Approval (0 new / 1 in progress)
102500: 3 Approvals (0 new / 3 in progress)
104000: 1 Withdrawal (1 new / 0 in progress)
06/22/22: 7 Total Updates: 4 Approvals, 1 Expedite(Denied: 1), 2 Withdrawals

[Ako & Rich 50]

7 hours ago, gooblue said:

To be honest I sympathize, here are details from the webinar notes I took:

 

So First up: USCIS backlog:

• 8.5 million cases pending
• 5.2 million are considered backlog           (does this imply k1 cases within 13 months are not considered backlog?)

 

Initiatives at a high level

• reusing biometrics
• video interviews
• social distancing "innovative solutions"   (why is this still a thing?)
• drive through oath ceremonies

 

Staffing Changes:

• The congressional funding allocated for USCIS(couple months ago) is being used for:
• paying overtime
• focusing on getting new staff
• first increase is mostly promotions and HR increases(someone correct me if I heard this wrong?)
• They finished off this section saying they are "now starting to get external hires"

 

The cycle times were mentioned, they didn't change from when they revealed them in the MAY webinar. (by end of 2023, i129-f form should be processed in 6 months - we are currently still seeing 13 month+)

 

Premium Processing Updates:

• still not available for everyone due to lack of adjudicators <- due to requirement of not slowing down normal processing of non premium filers AKA they'd need new adjudicators to just do premium processing without losing old adjudicators
• on above note, they said they are trying to hire more adjudicators

 

At this point they made points on increasing work permit validity/ead extensions/more work visa related flexibility/etc...

 

Technological Solutions  - in this section they mentioned tech improvements to help streamline the processes in general

• Moving non-adjudicator work to non adjudicator work (I think they mean that some of the work adjudicators do isn't actually necessary to be done by adjudicators, ie: simple tasks, and that they were spreading the load so adjudicators could focus on adjudicator specific work - hooray for us in theory)
• Reassigning officers handling routine questions to adjudications -> Think this means theyll have less people answering questions(ie: support) and moving them to adjudication(again Hooray for us in theory)
• Replacing ministritative work/validation with system. -> they "system" should handle more work ie in theory less workload for adjudicators by freeing up work they actually have to do(hooray for us in theory)
• Remote office to office interviews -> They mentioned officers at one location could video interview applicants at another interview to spread load -> I think this is more relevant to naturalization and local processes(irrelevant to us unless causes less adjudications somehow)
• Digitizing files to enable virtual processing/adjudication (Will this apply to RFEs we get so we can respond immediately and not have to wait for mail and mail back? Other than that this may be too slow for people who already filed and not be relevant, less someone scans everyone's pending forms)
• Increasing forms for online filing (see my comment above)

 

Last section was questions:  (this was a little disappointing as they didn't answer my chatbox question nor give me a chance to phone in as time ran out)

Notable answers:

• File retrieval backlog should be gone by July 2022(relevant to naturalization people, and as these backlogs clear people will be freed to work on more relevant stuff to us, again in theory)
• There was a question about where to reach out for people in weird limbo situations -> they didn't really give an answer it seemed

 

Questions I wanted to ask:

Considering Cycle goals by 2023, is there any chance we start to see an improvement soon/by end of 2022?

Will rfes be answerable online any time soon? (hopefully relevant to all of us waiting for  case to get touched and deal with rfe quickly if it comes)

 

 

And that it

 

Here is a video on YouTube, but these notes are more helpful than watching the long video. Thank you for the summary of today's webinar, @gooblue

 

 

[Xiaova 1,480]

Only two updates today:

 

94500: 1 RFES (1 new / 0 in progress)
101500: 1 Other (Name Was Updated) (1 new / 0 in progress)
06/23/22: 2 Total Updates: 1 RFES, 1 Other (Name Was Updated)

[Xiaova 1,480]

End of day updates for June:

94500: 3 RFESs (3 new / 0 in progress)
96000: 1 Expedite(Denied: 1) (1 new / 0 in progress)
97500: 1 Approval (1 new / 0 in progress)
102000: 1 Approval (0 new / 1 in progress)
102500: 1 Approval (0 new / 1 in progress)
06/24/22: 7 Total Updates: 3 Approvals, 3 RFESs, 1 Expedite(Denied: 1)

[bobobobobo 31]

Thanks again for the constant update Xiaova. 

I hope they touch the 94000's cases again soon. Wish I filed later on, lol.

[Xiaova 1,480]

End of day updates for June:

 

102500: 1 RFER (0 new / 1 in progress)
103000: 1 RFER (0 new / 1 in progress)
104000: 1 Approval (0 new / 1 in progress)
06/27/22: 3 Total Updates: 1 Approval, 2 RFERs