daru

There's no legal requirement anymore, indeed. I'm just saying there is a /need/, although not a /legal requirement/, to keep your address up to date with whoever you need to have issue your US passport. You must send them your original certificate of naturalization so don't take any chances. I think it's the Dept of State rather than the Dept of Homeland Security, though.

FYI, I still have a pending N-400 from mid-Sep 2024 and a pending I-751 from Aug 2023 which I requested in early Sep 2024 to be amended to Battery/Extreme Cruelty waiver. I also notified them of a (slight) change of address that occurred in late Jan 2025. Still no update to either filing. Both filings are starting to be overdue based on average processing times so I'm assuming it means they did receive everything and it's all being delayed by their reviewing my abuse claims, which I guess is good given that in the absence of acknowledgement of receipt of these I spent a lot of time wondering whether I had done everything right. My order of protection against my husband expires in a couple of weeks and I'm pretty anxious.

I'd say to receive your certificate and your passport but I guess this is with DOS and not DHS. Maybe this line is just added to all status changes automatically.

By "don't be moving on" I don't mean "don't divorce", I mean "don't remarry". I don't know how this flies with I-751 but I know that with I-360, remarrying is disqualifying. In the eyes of USCIS, your qualifying relationship doesn't end with divorce but does end with remarriage. Even if with I-751 a remarriage is not disqualifying (which I'm not certain of), it's going to be very frowned upon.

If I were you I would avoid remarrying before the I-751 is approved. If it's denied and you're remarried and file stuff based on second marriage, your case will be looking a lot like it's a fraudulent one. You're currently in the process of having a major immigration benefit assessed for your based on a certain relationship. That relationship didn't work out, but don't be too eager to move on from it while filing paperwork tied to it.

People use the expression VAWA to refer to the I-360. However, the VAWA and its renewals also regulate the I-751 Battery and Extreme Cruelty waiver (and an abuse-based cancellation of removal). I'm not too sure about the third but the first two are very similar. They share almost the same requirements and the resulting immigration benefit (10y GC) is the same. Although both these filings are VAWA ones, usually I refer to one as I-360 and the other as I-751 B/EC waiver for clarity. There are significant upsides to amending with B/EC waiver rather than divorce waiver, and vice-versa, depending on your situation. Also, I-751 filings are systematically approved based on a single waiver even if one qualifies for, and requested, more than one. The B/EC waiver is always reviewed before the divorce waiver, so if you request both, they won't look at your divorce waiver request before denying your B/EC waiver request (but if you requested both in the same filing they won't issue a denial unless the whole petition is denied). The main upside of filing for more than one waiver at a time is for the scenario where you get denied. If you get referred to immigration court before you get the time to refile following a denial, you will only be able to fight it, in a way that is kind of an appeal, based on waivers that were reviewed and denied by USCIS. For this reason, a lot of people who file with B/EC waiver but aren't so sure they will get approved also request a divorce waiver as a fallback, to make sure that even if they are put on removal proceedings, by the time they start to have hearings they will likely already be divorced.

People, including like adjudicators on Reddit and elsewhere, have been saying that the estimate is completely unreliable and meaningless (but they're lawyers, not engineers nor mathematicians, so they don't know how it's calculated or how much relevant data is being used to compute it). However, it obviously was based on /something/. The formula seems to have changed a few weeks ago so I'm hopeful that it's now more reliable. Maybe the estimate was based on all N-400 rules rather than specifically the one we selected, and/or was nationwide rather than specific to our field office. Also, maybe the estimate was based on the average processing speed of the last 12 or 24 months. The longer the period the smoother and stabler it is. If it's based on the last few weeks for instance, then the estimate is gonna very greatly within weeks if the amount of resources focused on processing this form varies. I've read on the overall Processing Times public page that 80% of the cases ending up at my field office were completed within like 6.5mo iirc. I filed in mid-September, and it's now telling me the case decision will be in 3mo. That sounds fairly accurate to me. A week or so ago, before the formula change, it was telling me something like 25 days. I imagine that it was either a median (50% of cases filed on my filing date rather than 80%), and/or based on the 5y rule, and/or based on everybody...

Also, the answer is always no if you requested a name change as only federal judges can adjudicate name changes.

If you check tomorrow you might find out that you had your oath ceremony yesterday 🙃

I don't have an update but I have new information. Someone in an immigration-related FB group asked a question yesterday and shared about their situation. They filed jointly in early 2023, then sent a request to amend their case to the B/EC waiver in January 2024. In June 2024, they received the following notice (they provided a screen capture, I'm typing "(...)" on all the parts that they scrambled): So it seems it's protocol for them to play dead while doing something resembling a prima facie on ROC cases before they convert them (although I'm not sure they mean to play dead for this long; but they do adjudicate the amendment request separately from the amended case and only get back to the applicant after that).

An annulment does not prevent you from removing conditions but it would likely be based on a claim that you married under false pretenses and you don't want a court document to state such a thing. An annulment may prompt for you to provide more justifications to USCIS. Also, an annulment will give your spouse a clean slate to do it all over again with his next victim as your marriage will have never happened in the first place so he will get to deny everything for the rest of his life, and you will be deprived of closure.

Also, annulments can happen with default judgements if he files for annulment and you don't fight it (which may require you to litigate, which in turn may require you to have a family lawyer on retainer; these are very expensive). Most respectable lawyers will drag their feet at the idea of filing a frivolous annulment suit, but one can always find someone who will play along.

Divorce waiver is more straightforward because you don't have much else to prove than the same things you already proved in 2021. However it does require a final judgement of divorce. You can still ask to add the divorce waiver without providing the divorce decree, then they're gonna issue an RFE (when they look at the filing, which might take a while longer), then either you have it and provide it or you don't can't provide it on time and they will deny the filing. However, you will still be able to refile I-751 later on with the divorce decree, as long as you haven't received an NTA (Notice to Appear, basically a summons to immigration courts for deportation). In immigration court, you will have the right to fight deportation using any ground that you already claimed through I-751 waiver requests, so at such time if you did previously request for USCIS to add a divorce waiver to your then-current I-751, then in immigration court you will be able to provide the divorce decree (alongside your proof of bona fides marriage) and get your conditions removed. Same as with abuse waiver, if you do request it, even if it's not approved, you'll be allowed to evidence battery or extreme cruelty during deportation proceedings to get your conditions removed. The point of the abuse waiver is mostly to protect you against rogue actions of your spouse or ex-spouse. The original purpose of the immigration provisions of VAWA, as marketed to both political sides, is to enable victims of abuse to have one fewer hindrance to cooperation with law enforcement against perpetrators of domestic abuse. Fewer USCIS officers are trained to review abuse-based filings and it seems I-751 waivers are fairly rare so nobody really seems to know how long they take or how they move around. You can request an abuse waiver if (a) you qualify, (b) you can prove it, (c) this waiver is more interesting to you than the divorce one. Note that you can request both, but the abuse one is always reviewed first because of its ramifications, so although it's still useful to ask for more than one waiver so you have more than one ground you can use in immigration courts, you shouldn't both request waivers for grounds that you're not confident you'll eventually be able to prove. If you request the abuse waiver, you will benefit from privacy and confidentiality provisions, and you will retain eligibility for 3-year naturalization. Whatever waiver(s) you request, as long as there is at least one, then your spouse can't just withdraw their signature and have the case fall apart because the filing will have become individual. In addition to that, if you request an abuse waiver, USCIS will be barred from making any adverse determination based solely on information given either anonymously or by your abuser or any person who might be acting on their behalf If you get arrested while you have a pending or approved VAWA case, you won't be automatically referred to ICE USCIS will waive the requirement that you still be married and living with your abuser when reviewing an N-400 filing under the 3-year rule if you have a pending/approved B/EC I-751. In order to qualify and in addition to the bona fides, you need to document, under the "Any credible evidence" evidentiary standard, at least one of the following: One occurrence of battery toward you. Battery is physical violence. That includes many misdemeanors of domestic violence such as stalking (e.g. chasing you in traffic seemingly to assault you), menacing (e.g. making credible death threats, waving a deadly weapon to intimidate you), assault (e.g. hitting, punching, kicking, shoving, pulling hair, spitting on you, cutting/bruising/burning you, injuring you in any way), sexual assault, criminal mischief (damaging/destroying stuff around you is using physical violence in a way that creates an imminent risk of physical harm to you, and that's how battery is defined), etc. One occurence of extreme cruelty toward you. Items under this category are sometimes one-time events, or acts unfolding over time. A few items for which one occurence is sufficient include crimes such as coercion/extortion; withholding medical assistance while you have a medical emergency; maliciously having you committed in a psych ward; inflicting serious injuries or death to your pets or your children. Some stuff like financial abuse, making you pay for everything, forcing you to work, forcing you to not work, taking away your paycheck, being frugal within the relationship while dissipating funds outside of it, these things count as extreme cruelty but are not really one-time things so you need to show a pattern of these. Psychological abuse toward you that meets two criteria: You can prove that it follows a pattern over time (so it can't be a one-time thing, you need to prove repetition over a good while); I suggest you google "cycle of abuse" to see what the pattern looks like. USCIS tends to consider that this is a clinical finding which means that (a) they prefer if a professional third party (physician, social worker, police, etc) makes that finding and (b) even the honeymoon part is part of the pattern. There is case law on an AOS VAWA (I-360) case where a woman married with a US citizen had to prove that she experienced battery or extreme cruelty while married and on US soil and she underwent physical abuse in Mexico, fled to the US, her abuser contacted her and lovebombed her and she went back to Mexico where she was abused again. She won her case in appeal because the lovebombing is part of the clinical pattern of the cycle of abuse. If you're married with an alcoholic you know exactly what I'm talking about. Actually you said it yourself. Their being nice in-between drinks is how they keep us captive. This item is the best to accomodate abuse that presents in a mellow way (without one of those clear-cut occurrences of battery or extreme cruelty which I mention above) but it's also hazardous to demonstrate. You can secure a psych evaluation by a licensed mental health practitioner (can be a psychiatrist, a social worker, a psychologist, etc) that determines: you have a mental injury (meaning, a formal diagnosis such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic, phobia, personality disorder, etc), AND this diagnosis appears to be a direct consequence of the abuse Note that USCIS seems to heavily rely on state family case law, so if something qualifies as abuse for divorce purposes, and if you can prove it, it is likely that you have a decent case for USCIS. I suggest you look PDF publications of the NIWAP (National Immigrant Women Advocacy Project), they've been extremely helpful to me in getting a better understanding of what may or may not count. Qualifying criminal activity for the purpose of other stuff such as the U visa (hostage, slavery, torture, blackmail, etc) does usually qualify as either battery or extreme cruelty afaik. Finally, as far as proof goes, just like with bona fides there is the soft evidence (photos, audios if you're in a one-party consent state, etc), the hard evidence (acknowledgement by third parties of there having been abuse: police reports, criminal cases, orders of protection, medical reports describing injuries, abuse-based divorce decree, psych evaluation etc), and the statement and cover letter. Most appeals I could find online on VAWA cases featured a denial for two most recurring reasons: Spouse was mean, we're sorry you're traumatized, but these acts don't amount to our definitions of battery/extreme cruelty Lack of probative details (location, date, time, what discussion led to the incident, what was the social dynamic in the preceding days or weeks that led to this situation, what factors such as addiction or mental illness make that claim to this abusive behavior be more likely to be truthful). So the problem in your case is how you go about proving that your injuries are not self-inflicted for immigration purposes in the absence of police reports. If you have a lot of pieces of evidence of a variety of types (photos, med/psych docs, audio transcripts, testimonies from credible witnesses, etc) on several occurrences, it becomes much more likely truthful to an immigration officer that at least one of the claims is true, and with enough details of probative value, they can turn around their chair and argue to their direct supervisor that this case qualify because there's this event with these details that are clear enough to check the box. If all your evidence is first-party, you will have a serious burden of credibility to overcome. Some people are approved with just their statement and with little to no corroborating evidence, and USCIS insists on not providing much of a list of qualifying events or qualifying evidence because they want to encourage everybody who underwent domestic abuse to show it to them. it's not a lost cause. The standard is "any credible evidence". However, you do need to be mindful of the fact that the more third-party evidence you have, from professionals who are qualified to leave a paper trail that says "this person did experience domestic abuse" that USCIS officers can readily show to their boss during their daily/weekly/monthly performance reviews, the easier your case gets. DO NOT use anything audio or video if it was recorded in a State that requires the consent of all parties involved, or you will likely get referred by USCIS for a felony charge. If you do live in a one-party consent State, please note that USCIS doesn't do multimedia, so you will likely have to either transform your video into some kind of picture album and/or just use the audio track and put it in some transcription software (I used www.notta.ai, it's a Japanese platform for audio transcription, and yes they do English) to just provide a PDF transcript. My advice: Check with organizations that provide services to victims of domestic violence what your rights are. Even if you don't get for them to represent you, if at least you can get for them to look at your evidence and statement you will get a better sense of how solid your case is whether it be for housing, for immigration, etc. Collect as much evidence as you can before you move out. Take pictures, scan all documents that you have the right to scan. And also, consider not moving out. If you press charges and get an order of protection, and as long as you can keep paying the rent, you will be able to keep living in the house and your abuser will be the one moving out. I don't know where you live but in NYC, many precincts have a DV officer and you can show up and request to speak with a DV officer and they will provide you some guidance on what your options are and on whether you have enough evidence for your abuser to be arrested and charged. Start going to Al-Anon meetings, preferably in-person if you can (but don't attend online meetings while your abuser is nearby). Go several times per week if you can. It's not a "once-per-month" thing. And keep attending even after you separate. Go to at least maybe 10 meetings within a month or so. I promise you, things do get better.

Still no update, but I ended up just uploading all of my evidence onto the joint case on myUSCIS last week. I'm very uncomfortable with that but at least I know that they have all of it. I also called the Customer Contact Center and the best response I was able to get was that my evidence would be looked at during adjudication to assert at such time whether it's appropriate to apply VAWA-related procedures. The purpose of my call was to assert that now that I uploaded the evidence including a cover letter that requests the addition of that waiver, rather than God knows when. Seeing as I did apply for naturalization, I'm hopeful that my I-751 will be bumped up anyway and that I won't wait long. However, no news from the amendment request packet that I physically sent in early/mid September. I'm contemplating reaching out to the USCIS mediator or to my Congressperson because I'm still not sure that it's in my best interest to simply sit and wait.

Absolutely. There's a reason that I-751s exist. You can't naturalize before they have given a second look at the bona fides of your marriage.