MAY 2023 K1 to NOA2 to NVC to EMBASSY

[Pangoleen 66]

Friendly reminder that once you guys hit 60+ days of waiting for your cases to be transferred to the NVC, you can put in a request for case assistance to the CIS Ombudsman.

 

Some from my March group have now been waiting for 100 days without a word, so I think all of us need to start taking action.

[ffsRhys 24]

20 hours ago, Pangoleen said:

Friendly reminder that once you guys hit 60+ days of waiting for your cases to be transferred to the NVC, you can put in a request for case assistance to the CIS Ombudsman.

 

Some from my March group have now been waiting for 100 days without a word, so I think all of us need to start taking action.

For sure! Our lawyers also said they would do this when our case hits 60 days so definately worth doing all!

[Mr.So 56]

On 6/4/2023 at 1:09 PM, Pangoleen said:

Friendly reminder that once you guys hit 60+ days of waiting for your cases to be transferred to the NVC, you can put in a request for case assistance to the CIS Ombudsman.

 

Some from my March group have now been waiting for 100 days without a word, so I think all of us need to start taking action.

 

6 hours ago, ffsRhys said:

For sure! Our lawyers also said they would do this when our case hits 60 days so definately worth doing all!

I'm reading the I-797 again and it says to contact the NVC after 30 days. Should we do this after 30 days instead of after 60 days?

[Bh_sarah 942]

1 hour ago, Mr.So said:

 

I'm reading the I-797 again and it says to contact the NVC after 30 days. Should we do this after 30 days instead of after 60 days?

I'll start inquiring at 30 days because it's the official timeline they give us. Though I won't expect anything until around 70-80 days. I mean, if I didn't follow VJ or other social media, I would never know people are getting their case numbers at around 90 days so I will pretend I do not know haha

[Mr.So 56]

4 minutes ago, Bh_sarah said:

I'll start inquiring at 30 days because it's the official timeline they give us. Though I won't expect anything until around 70-80 days. I mean, if I didn't follow VJ or other social media, I would never know people are getting their case numbers at around 90 days so I will pretend I do not know haha

Same I don't know anything and dumb af 😅

[Saeid 127]

1 hour ago, Mr.So said:

 

I'm reading the I-797 again and it says to contact the NVC after 30 days. Should we do this after 30 days instead of after 60 days?

Of course! In their official letter , they stated " we have SENT" ... Please allow 30 days to NVC receive it... Sorry to say this but as much as we not saying anything and do nothing and just wait , they keep delaying process. Unfortunately regular USCIS operator have no knowledge and they just reading and responding from the transcript. Call USCIS ask for tier 2 agent, yes it will take up to 30 days to call you back but it worth. 

[Mr.So 56]

2 minutes ago, Saeid said:

Of course! In their official letter , they stated " we have SENT" ... Please allow 30 days to NVC receive it... Sorry to say this but as much as we not saying anything and do nothing and just wait , they keep delaying process. Unfortunately regular USCIS operator have no knowledge and they just reading and responding from the transcript. Call USCIS ask for tier 2 agent, yes it will take up to 30 days to call you back but it worth. 

If it takes up to 30 days for tier 2 to call me, I should call and ask for tier 2 now so when they call me its perfect time to ask: "where is my case man!? Its been 30 days"

[FilledesEtoiles 336]

9 hours ago, Bh_sarah said:

I'll start inquiring at 30 days because it's the official timeline they give us. Though I won't expect anything until around 70-80 days. I mean, if I didn't follow VJ or other social media, I would never know people are getting their case numbers at around 90 days so I will pretend I do not know haha

It seems to be very country dependent though. We will not get any welcome letter but just a notification with NVC number saying that our case is in transit to the local embassy. My guess is that it also depends on how busy the local embassy is. Perhaps it is a period where embassies are busier than normal? 

[Bh_sarah 942]

6 hours ago, FilledesEtoiles said:

It seems to be very country dependent though. We will not get any welcome letter but just a notification with NVC number saying that our case is in transit to the local embassy. My guess is that it also depends on how busy the local embassy is. Perhaps it is a period where embassies are busier than normal? 

I'm trying to understand this too and I am trying to follow the cases from my country close. It does seem that no matter what country, it's taking at least 60 days for the petition to reach NVC (to hear back from NVC saying that they have your case, no case number allocated yet). The only case that took about 40 cases that I know is one from Cuba. Then it's 2 weeks to get a case number. Now, after the case number and getting it to reach the embassy is something I am not following too closely, probably because I pay attention to January and February cases and most have not been sent yet.
 

The NVC waiting being country-dependent to me only works in the last stage, and not in the USCIS -> NVC stage. This one used to be 30 days, people usually didn't even inquire NVC about it before because they got the NVC confirmation inside the expected timeline. Now it's taking 2x, 3x more for everyone it seems (at least K1, not sure about other visas).

Edited June 6, 2023 by Bh_sarah

[Pangoleen 66]

1 hour ago, Bh_sarah said:

The NVC waiting being country-dependent to me only works in the last stage, and not in the USCIS -> NVC stage. This one used to be 30 days, people usually didn't even inquire NVC about it before because they got the NVC confirmation inside the expected timeline. Now it's taking 2x, 3x more for everyone it seems (at least K1, not sure about other visas).

Not sure if true, but I've heard that other visa categories are still being transferred from USCIS to NVC within 30 days. That's what infuriates me the most.

[Bh_sarah 942]

25 minutes ago, Pangoleen said:

Not sure if true, but I've heard that other visa categories are still being transferred from USCIS to NVC within 30 days. That's what infuriates me the most.

I thought about checking other visas but didn't want to face another disappointment... Guess my intuition was correct. This sucks. They know we're one of the most backlogged visa categories and they decide to make us wait a little bit more. Wonderful.

[FilledesEtoiles 336]

4 hours ago, Bh_sarah said:

I thought about checking other visas but didn't want to face another disappointment... Guess my intuition was correct. This sucks. They know we're one of the most backlogged visa categories and they decide to make us wait a little bit more. Wonderful.

The problem is that we can guess about everything, and not know for sure, because the process is again very opaque. I see the NVC timeline historically goes up and down like a wave. I have seen cases on FB groups get notifications from NVC way before 60 days, at 45 sometimes. Why? No idea, thought it was perhaps country dépendent. I agree, it's beyond frustrating to wait again to be with the person you love, waiting to get married without à date in the calendar .... I just hope and pray all will be smooth and we won't have to wait too long. 

[Bh_sarah 942]

1 hour ago, FilledesEtoiles said:

The problem is that we can guess about everything, and not know for sure, because the process is again very opaque. I see the NVC timeline historically goes up and down like a wave. I have seen cases on FB groups get notifications from NVC way before 60 days, at 45 sometimes. Why? No idea, thought it was perhaps country dépendent. I agree, it's beyond frustrating to wait again to be with the person you love, waiting to get married without à date in the calendar .... I just hope and pray all will be smooth and we won't have to wait too long. 

I got curious and went to check the threads for the approved in February, January and for the ones approved in December 2022. They did end up getting their cases sent to the embassy at around the 60 day mark, which is a good timeline considering 30 days for USCIS -> NVC and 20 weeks for NVC case assignment. Things started getting slower on January, then definitely slower on February. March became almost the norm to wait 60 days to have the case received by NVC only. I'm analyzing the VJ timelines right now to confirm it. If anyone want to check it too, feel free.

It also coincides with the time USCIS ramped up processing, so I know it's all circumstantial evidence, but I would say it's definitely NVC being backlogged and not really the embassies being busy, at least not in the phase we are now, waiting to get the case transferred. It sucks, but we have no control again, just like we had no control over the processing times until now  Hoping they do something to speed up NVC processing now.

[Mr.So 56]

1 hour ago, FilledesEtoiles said:

The problem is that we can guess about everything, and not know for sure, because the process is again very opaque. I see the NVC timeline historically goes up and down like a wave. I have seen cases on FB groups get notifications from NVC way before 60 days, at 45 sometimes. Why? No idea, thought it was perhaps country dépendent. I agree, it's beyond frustrating to wait again to be with the person you love, waiting to get married without à date in the calendar .... I just hope and pray all will be smooth and we won't have to wait too long. 

if it's country dependent then the bottleneck is at the embassies. If it is not, I hope someone would notice the wait time between USCIS and the NVC and doing something about it🙏. 

[Pangoleen 66]

51 minutes ago, Mr.So said:

if it's country dependent then the bottleneck is at the embassies. If it is not, I hope someone would notice the wait time between USCIS and the NVC and doing something about it🙏. 

I honestly doubt it's got anything to do with embassy backlogs, for three reasons:

 

• People from all over the world are receiving their interview dates pretty quickly for the most part, once the consulate has actually received their case. Plus, I know for a fact that my embassy is not backlogged at all and I'm almost at the 90 day mark without a word still.

 

• As far as I'm aware, USCIS is probably not keeping tabs on which embassies are backlogged and which aren't, and I doubt the NVC would be telling USCIS "please hold only cases for X country".

 

• Rumor has it that most other visa categories are still being transferred in a timely manner.