February 2022 Filers!

[aaroncv3 106]

2 hours ago, Ramirez65 said:

Very interesting!  I look at hilites every day just to be reassured that cases are at least moving.  It’s more of a distraction than anything.  Unfortunately, I don’t think we can assume or predict anything with USCIS.

I agree, I too have found distraction in trying to better understand the situation.

 

I do, however, think we can reasonably assume USCIS will continue moving will all the speed and efficiency of government. 🤣

 

Hang in there; we're close!  Although we cannot know for sure, based on updates in the Dec 2021 and Jan 2022 filer threads, I'd say that assuming we're close is indeed a reasonable assumption!

[Ramirez65 69]

18 hours ago, Mern V said:

Ahhh brilliant! Well done, you're very sleuth-y!

 

I'm seeing case numbers beginning with 91xxx... and mine is 95xxx. I dunno what to make of that, to be honest. 

 

5 minutes ago, aaroncv3 said:

I agree, I too have found distraction in trying to better understand the situation.

 

I do, however, think we can reasonably assume USCIS will continue moving will all the speed and efficiency of government. 🤣

 

Hang in there; we're close!  Although we cannot know for sure, based on updates in the Dec 2021 and Jan 2022 filer threads, I'd say that assuming we're close is indeed a reasonable assumption!

What we really need is one of us to go and work for USCIS and report back....a mole of sorts 🤣  I'm only half-kidding - don't think I haven't looked into it myself 

[aaroncv3 106]

38 minutes ago, Ramirez65 said:

 

What we really need is one of us to go and work for USCIS and report back....a mole of sorts 🤣  I'm only half-kidding - don't think I haven't looked into it myself 

Drop your keyboard, mouse, and smartphone on the ground, back away from the usajobs.gov website slowly, and dont reach for anything or make any sudden or fast moves. 🤣🤣

[Ramirez65 69]

2 minutes ago, aaroncv3 said:

Drop your keyboard, mouse, and smartphone on the ground, back away from the usajobs.gov website slowly, and dont reach for anything or make any sudden or fast moves. 🤣🤣

😂 😂 😂 😂

Just to give you an idea of exactly how far my neurosis led me......I was on the usajobs.gov website and I spotted an open position for a Technical Project Manager (right up my alley....I fulfilled all the requirements.....remote position......pay was good......hey, why not??).  Then I went on Glass Door and read every one of the 450+ reviews written by current and former employees of USCIS.  Wow - if you want to read about some disgruntled employees, just check out the reviews from people who were hired to handle the asylum cases 😬  I decided after about 3 hours of that I really didn't want to work for USCIS.  I think once I get through this process, I am going to erase everything having to do with USCIS from my brain!  There was one review that I found very interesting and made me think that we don't realize what those officers go through.  Here it is for your reading pleasure (I know it's long but it gave me a new perspective):

 

Pros

I’ve worked in both FOD and SCOPS. -Field Office will provide the most value for your career path with a lot of opportunities to grow and promote. -SCOPS has remote and flexible schedules; very convenient for work/life balance. -GS pay scale on career ladder promotions is great. -You should have no fear, I’ve never seen anyone fired from FOD or SCOPS. Also a con.

Cons

-This is a reactive agency not proactive like it should. I've noticed we're never prepared for what is ahead even with full awareness and abilities to prevent failure. Our reputation speaks for itself. This agency damages itself and is often misprioritizing or focusing in the wrong areas. We often just shift work around to make it appear were doing something. -Depending on administration; the work demand and focus changes either in a positive or negative way. It’ll never be stable, but there will always be work. Immigration will never go away. I would say current administration leaves this agency in the negative hence this bullet in the con. -FOD and SCOPS both have horrible ineffective training, leaving you with very little knowledge or ability to do your job effectively. You will learn as you go on the fly and some not at all which you’ll notice through sheer incompetence. I would say SCOPS training is by worse compared to FOD, both still a dumpster fire. They just want bodies in to start stamping up cases. -SCOPS has an extremely low standard for quality of work. Quantity is valued over quality, yet still has a very poor production time. Feels like a circus and the overall mindset is to just decide a case without any real thought process or reasoning almost always leaning into incorrect decisions. -SCOPS case work is for some unknown reason dissected into parts and spread to multiple teams to complete. I'm often waiting on other teams to complete my part (final decision) of the case. No one can explain why or the logic behind it. It’s very ineffective and slows down my production. But I will be harassed with emails for case inquiry status updates and my answer is I am still waiting on someone else. I can wait months for something I could have completed on my own. -SCOPS leadership (supervisors, chiefs, assoc directors) appear inept, they have very little adjudication skills or understanding of immigration law. This is the leadership responsible for production and effective, meaningful decisions but doesn't comprehend any more than a standard officer. -You're given independent authority; however, approvals are never questioned, yet denials are. I often find errors in other officers’ work/decisions when it comes time to follow up on applicants’ status. -SCOPS is very backlogged with cases and appears to have no control over the issue. I would attribute this to the severely lacking leadership missing the right set of skills and experience. Also, an overabundance of upper-level positions. Too many chiefs and not enough Indians; creating chaos and mishandling the overall operation. -SCOPS will hire anyone with a pulse. I am often astounded by the other officers lack of skills and abilities; commonly making incorrect decisions and frequent use of poor judgment, they like to call "discretion". Cases will be blindly decided, poor critical thinking & writing skills, etc. -SCOPS has little accountability, because most are remote workers with no one looking over their shoulder - resulting in trickling production. The production expectation is also set very low. -SCOPS is very restrictive with its overtime, which I find odd considering the demand to reduce the backlog. Go figure. -FOD interviewing can wear you down after months of it at a time, every day, nonstop. Although it is rewarding and challenging. -FOD has a demand for as many interviews completed without enough time to provide a quality and sound decision to gather all facts and review in a timely manner. -SCOPS feels redundant and robotic because you will be placed on a team to work only a single form type day in, day out. -The agency pulls billions from fees but is cheap when hiring. They're unlikely to offer reasonable pay to anyone coming from the outside, even with multiple degrees. -Promotions are usually not based on qualifications, more so based off who is most liked. -Hiring process is not streamlined and to transfer for the same positions you must apply and interview.

Advice to Management

-Improve the hiring process and selections. Raise the standard and pay to attract better officers. -Consolidate the superfluous management positions and make better selections. -Raise expectations from officers and instill more accountability overall. -Take a thorough look at training and survey officers how to improve; then actually do it. Invest in your officers and you’d have better quality of work and production. -Find a solution to the quantity over quality to eliminate erroneous decisions. My first suggestion would be to implement better policy and beef up the regulation. End the constant extensions and allow to reject or deny applications that submit zero evidence or multiple duplicate applications. I would think this would speed up wait times and allow officer to spend more time focusing on applications that are ready for adjudication. Allowing a 7-month extension for applications that have been pending well over a year for lack of evidence only contributes to blocking the pipeline to someone with a clear-cut ready case or cases that require some quality time to review. -Integrate your systems and stop adding more standalone systems.

 

[aaroncv3 106]

10 minutes ago, Ramirez65 said:

😂Cons

Identical to the "meeting with the Bobs" from Office Space.

 

 

[Ramirez65 69]

29 minutes ago, aaroncv3 said:

Identical to the "meeting with the Bobs" from Office Space.

 

 

🤣 This pretty much describes my job since I went remote 3 years ago.  My favorite part - he's wearing flip-flops in the office 😂😂😂😂

[Ramirez65 69]

On 2/14/2023 at 11:25 PM, aaroncv3 said:

 

Good find.  I also explored web crawlng and scraping USCIS for IOE cases.  I got the idea from this guy's videos:  https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC-j8oeknNu89pFRZLEWSwwQ

 

He is not scraping IOE cases, but WSC, if I recall correctly.  So, I wrote a script to crawl and scrape 40,000 cases near my IOE case number.  My assumption was that a pattern would emerge.

 

Based on my findings, of the 40,000 possible case numbers near mine, less than 10% actually existed in USCIS.  Of that percentage, there did not appear to be any relationship between the case number, the case type, and the last action date.

 

So, however a case is numbered, it does not follow the same numbering standards as the paper filings received into other service centers.

 

This may be done to add a layer of obscurity to protect customers (that is, us).  Or it may be done for other reasons.  It may be only a marginally less obvious numbering system that I just didn't intuitively see.  I can't say for certain.

 

All this to say, don't be either encouraged nor discouraged to see IOE case numbers before or after yours to receive action. 

 

They are not in sequential order.

 

[NorthnerSouth98 23]

Hi All! 
 

Long time lurker and first time poster! 
 

PD: February 22nd, 2022

I130 Approved/NOA2: February 6th, 2023

 

US citizen with spouse living abroad (Canada). We contacted both our local representative and the US Senator or North Carolina. 
 

The Senator’s office inquired last week and yesterday were given a blanket “it is within normal processing times” by USCIS. Today my wife received a notice email, checked in Documents section and it was there. 
 

Hope this helps! 
 

A few notes: 

1. I think having the US representatives reach out definitely helped. 
2. Before we asked them to we submitted a bunch of unrequested evidence. 
3. This may be a long shot but I previously held a student visa from 2012-2018 so I’m wondering if that helped with ease of approval. 
 

I will keep you all updated as we move forward. 

[Ramirez65 69]

6 minutes ago, NorthnerSouth98 said:

Hi All! 
 

Long time lurker and first time poster! 
 

PD: February 22nd, 2022

I130 Approved/NOA2: February 6th, 2023

 

US citizen with spouse living abroad (Canada). We contacted both our local representative and the US Senator or North Carolina. 
 

The Senator’s office inquired last week and yesterday were given a blanket “it is within normal processing times” by USCIS. Today my wife received a notice email, checked in Documents section and it was there. 
 

Hope this helps! 
 

A few notes: 

1. I think having the US representatives reach out definitely helped. 
2. Before we asked them to we submitted a bunch of unrequested evidence. 
3. This may be a long shot but I previously held a student visa from 2012-2018 so I’m wondering if that helped with ease of approval. 
 

I will keep you all updated as we move forward. 

Congratulations!!  All of us here want to be in your position right now.  My PD is February 14, 2022 (my case turned a year a couple of days ago).  I had our Congresswoman send an inquiry on my case and I got the same response as you did (it is within normal processing times).  Maybe I'll try our Senator next.  Which processing center approved your case?  

[NorthnerSouth98 23]

Just now, Ramirez65 said:

Congratulations!!  All of us here want to be in your position right now.  My PD is February 14, 2022 (my case turned a year a couple of days ago).  I had our Congresswoman send an inquiry on my case and I got the same response as you did (it is within normal processing times).  Maybe I'll try our Senator next.  Which processing center approved your case?  

Sorry I knew I left one part out, California and transferred from Potomac.

[aaroncv3 106]

11 minutes ago, NorthnerSouth98 said:

I130 Approved/NOA2: February 6th, 2023

[...]

A few notes: 

1. I think having the US representatives reach out definitely helped. 
2. Before we asked them to we submitted a bunch of unrequested evidence. 

Great news, and super duper congratulations!  

 

I sent a message on USCIS a few days ago asking if my case is still at Texas Service Center or if it has been transferred, and if so, when.  I have not heard back yet.  I wanted to include that info on VJ Timeline, if applicable.

 

I submitted a bunch of unsolicited evidence about 5 months after the original PD.  I can't say for sure if it changed anything for better or worse.

[NorthnerSouth98 23]

Just now, aaroncv3 said:

Great news, and super duper congratulations!  

 

I sent a message on USCIS a few days ago asking if my case is still at Texas Service Center or if it has been transferred, and if so, when.  I have not heard back yet.  I wanted to include that info on VJ Timeline, if applicable.

 

I submitted a bunch of unsolicited evidence about 5 months after the original PD.  I can't say for sure if it changed anything for better or worse.

You can actually ask Emma if it’s been transferred, that’s how we discovered it a few months back. Simply type “info pass” in the chat with her and you’ll get promoted before speaking to a real person. They can tell you where your case is!

[aaroncv3 106]

1 minute ago, NorthnerSouth98 said:

You can actually ask Emma if it’s been transferred, that’s how we discovered it a few months back. Simply type “info pass” in the chat with her and you’ll get promoted before speaking to a real person. They can tell you where your case is!

Great, I'll give it a shot when I'm in front of the computer.  It wasn't clear to me where to find Emma when checking from my phone.

[Ramirez65 69]

19 minutes ago, NorthnerSouth98 said:

Sorry I knew I left one part out, California and transferred from Potomac.

Oooooh.....I'm in California as well

[Ramirez65 69]

14 minutes ago, aaroncv3 said:

Great news, and super duper congratulations!  

 

I sent a message on USCIS a few days ago asking if my case is still at Texas Service Center or if it has been transferred, and if so, when.  I have not heard back yet.  I wanted to include that info on VJ Timeline, if applicable.

 

I submitted a bunch of unsolicited evidence about 5 months after the original PD.  I can't say for sure if it changed anything for better or worse.

You know you can get that information instantly on Emma?  When you open Ask Emma, just type in Live Agent and go through the steps to get to a live person.  You can ask them where your case is being processed and they'll answer you immediately.  I do that every couple of months.