US Immigration from Japan

Hello everyone,

I am seeking some advice for my spouse and I. My spouse is a Japanese citizen holding a permanent residency card. We completed our i-130 and my spouse was granted her residency here in the United States 2-years ago. It is now time for us to submit a i-751 to remove conditions on her residency. Previously when we went through the i-130 process, while I was stationed in Japan, we answered "yes" on her i-130 in reference to "have you ever committed a crime...etc." This was also documented in her ds-260 that we were required to submit.

My spouse was able to get her criminal record pulled from the local police office where we filed, but it was sealed, so we do not know if there is in fact any record of her crime. When she was 14 years old she was caught shoplifting, taken to the police station and questioned, then later released to her mother. To her knowledge, she never needed to pay a fine, nor was she charged for the crime. When we spoke to the counselor at her interview for her i-130, they accepted the documents of her criminal history and she was accepted.

From my interpretation, in the directions (i-751) it states that she is required to provide documentation (again) on the incident. The document would require either my spouse traveling back to Japan and hand receiving the record, or requesting the record through the local embassy, which we were quoted at potentially taking up to 3 months to receive. I have called USCIS three separate times requesting more information, but it seems they are not allowed to answer whether or not she has to submit the criminal record again or not. Today I spoke with another USCIS representative and he suggested it possible that I provide a written statement of the situation and that we have already previously disclosed this and provided the criminal record for her i-130.

She has not committed any crimes since gaining her residency (in her 2-year conditional period). As it stands I have written the letter that was recommended, and included it with her filing documents signed by both of us.

My questions are;

Does she in fact need to submit the same criminal record for the i-751, or is this stored in the USCIS database for reference?

Does the question on form i-751 refer to the conditional 2-year period, or is it in fact "have you ever"?

Supposedly USCIS plans on hiring some 4400 new members(See here). I am curious how much do you guys think it would speed up applications for us?

Some considerations:

1. They want to get to 95% capacity by December.

2. If just 50 of those adjudicate on K1 Visas, we could see an extra 50-200 touched cases a day(with 50 being a veryyyy low estimate)

3. Of course some people will have left uscis in that time as well.

So I just watched the virtual engagement that aired today on Microsoft Teams at 2:00 pm? Not sure if it was recorded anywhere: <future link here?>

Wanted to start a discussion on it and gather people's opinions.

Did anyone catch the comment about how California Service Center(primary processor of i129f/k1s) was apparently slowed down due to "restructuring" and how they are suppose to be back on track?

Given current efficiency it doesn't seem to be any different then what it was a couple months ago so I don't understand what that was?

My husband who came here on a K1 and now has a conditional greencard just renewed his passport. His passport number changed, so do we have to inform USCIS that we renewed it and give them his new passport number before we file to remove conditions on his greencard? If so, what's the process?

Does anybody know embassy interview times? Like from the moment NVC approves your docs to interview?