P+J

Actually, there are rights. I'm a December filer just FYI before you make any remark. As filers we have rights to know about our cases. We prove our identity when we give them case number, address, and social security number. Do you need to read the FOIA and Privacy Act? However, the last few times I called I was denied rights. A petitioner has the right to put in a second service request when 30 days have passed since the response from the first service request and no approval was made. I was denied. Idk... maybe the rep was having a bad day. The other time, the tier 2 rep would not tell me if my case has been assigned or if there was any AP status or anything holding it up. NOTHING THAT WOULD REQUIRE A WRITTEN FOIA REQUEST... and I was denied. So yes, it does happen.

Wow. that is crazy that you're still waiting. have you talked to your representatives? Congress? Senate? There has to be something they can do at this point. They should be able to at least get you some information on the status of the case. You're way outside of processing times which gives them more power to at least get you some information and maybe bring enough attention to your petition that someone approves it.

Holding my breath for y'all this week. We don't usually see that much action on Mondays, that has to be a good sign, right? *crosses fingers*

Hope soo. They need to stay consistent and not deviate from this pace of approvals. I'm nervous being into the 190s..I haven't seen too many petitions go beyond 195 on VJ timelines (Even when VSC was at its worst over a year ago). Really hope they can just take care of business now and get the remaining January filers out of the way..

for those who still left there waiting, updates (total yesterday):

January 5:

1 x approval

January 17:

1 x approval

January 18:

1 x approval

1 x RFE

January 19:

2 x approvals

January 20:

7 x approvals !!! wow!

January 30:

1 x approval

I really hope we can have another day like this again...Come on VSC.

some one on my friends list got approved today. she didnt updated her time line but she posted it on her profile. She has a NOA1 date of Jan 19. Im confident we all will be approved by end of the week. keeping my fingers and toes cross for you all.

Yes. Hoping so much I'll have some good news tomorrow or Wednesday. At least that would probably get me out of VSC with all of you to NVC..

Paul86 you should be next... Someone from 1/20 just got approved this morning.

I hope it will be tomorrow or Wednesday Islandgal. Thanks everyone for the support. It is crazy the length of time but maybe now it will be coming to an end. Tomorrow will be 195 days without a word at all from them...I think there's only 1 other user from the January filers who is currently active and waited a similar amount of time (with a received date of 1/18 or before). It would be great to be approved before July is over..Only 1 day left. I don't want to get any closer to 7 months...

Congratulation Titantom! Hope I can join you guys tomorrow! Would love to get an NOA2 out of VSC before July is over...we need another 7 approvals for VJ Timelines again!! that would finish a majority of waiting January filers off. we don't have many left waiting..I was going through the unapproved tonight...Many profiles are inactive or deleted..There's not many of us left at all. Hope they can finish this now.

Paul, you are next, it doesnt go past Wednesday

Hope so bro. If I can get it before then I should make it out of VSC with the next batch heading to NVC. Would be great. So ready for this wait to be over.

Paul,sabi,skiptex,texas22, and all the other January filers you all are next, one file down.....one to the next one. and thank you all for the support. Im still gonna be here for you all

It definitely feels like a turning point now. This is what we were all waiting for. Hope springs forth and this can finally be the week that we can all move forward.

Thank you all for all the love you been showing to us.....and for all those peeps left out there, i know how you all feel. im just hoping we all get through this week and make it to the NVC the same time. Im super exited right now. I was about to eat and i dont feel hungry any more.

I was expecting and RFE for the Birth Certificate so it was really unbelievable

congrats bro!!! so happy for you. I hope I'll be celebrating soon too along with many others who are still patiently waiting here.. Then all of us off to NVC together. Come on VSC

today i called state district rep and asked about my visa case and when they called back they informed me just today they have had many complaints about vsc this not seem very good since the district house reps area are not so big and to have many complaints in one day all about vsc and k1 visa's maybe they will but little fire in vsc tail

yes. I hope something speeds things up over there...I'll be at 200 days after this week (201 next Monday). I haven't seen too many petitions go beyond the 190's so I hope this week will bring an end to this insane wait....

Looks like we had some approvals come through today. 3 VJ users with petitions at VSC had good news. Now hope the trend can continue. Will be interesting to see what the numbers reveal for any non-VJ associated timelines...The start of improved adjudication trends I hope..we shall see.

Hi Everyone,

I sent my I-129F about ten days ago and just received my NOA1. I would like to request that both my senator and my governor call the USCIS to petition on my fiance and my behalf, but I am wondering when is the best time to do this. My case probably isn't being looked through yet.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thank you!

It's impossible to know if they'll be able to do anything at all. Some representatives have more experiences than others with any meaningful level of interaction with USCIS. I have been waiting over 6 months (194 days today) and unfortunately even my representatives aren't able to put the pressure needed to speed up the adjudication process. I would be prepared to wait up until 7 months (odds are you will have an approval before then). But processing times fluctuate frequently and you could be waiting as short at 120-130 days or as long as 200+. There is no consistency in the process. Just be ready for the ride of your life...it's impossible to survive without a superhuman level of patience

Looking back, do you regret spending the money on the attorney?

If I don't receive an RFE, it was money well spent because I'm sure a couple of small details would have potentially resulted in an RFE since I had not discovered this website and its resources before filing....The attorney has a decent amount of experience (over 25 years) and if they did their job properly and USCIS hasn't lost anything, I should be okay. If I do receive an RFE, it was a complete waste of money. An attorney is basically useless in this process and about the only thing they can do is help to review your petition before submission to USCIS. After that, unless your case is particularly complicated, they have no real value. When they call USCIS, they speak to the same CSRs that we do. They receive the same responses. And they can do nothing to help the situation. So I would be pretty devastated to receive an RFE for the time added and also the fact that I wasted such a large sum of money to end up in the same situation I tried to avoid. In that scenario I might as well have set up a money pit and burned the 2,000 because that's about all it would have been worth. At this point, I'd rather wait an extra week or 2 and not receive an RFE. After spending that kind of money, it would just depress me. This process is so illogical that it makes me sick. But I'd like to at least feel as though I didn't completely throw that money away. A clean approval would help in that regard. I just really hope that I'm approved this week.

i'm with you guys..194 days and waiting..with no end in sight..there cannot be any type of reasonable explaination for this forgotten fraternity that we January filers are experiencing..it is what it is i guess, no one wants to acknowledge there's a proprem and try to fix it for us..so we wait. at least i'm able to head over to thailand to visit at the end of the month..good luck guys, hope it breaks open soon..

Hopefully this week will bring some good news...it seems few petitions go beyond the 190s without at least an RFE. (although an RFE would still not be good news to me as it would mean I wasted almost $2,000 to file this petition with the assistance of an experienced attorney) ...

updates for today:

January 18:

1 x RFE

1 x approval

January 19:

1 x RFE

at least some consistency. maybe they'll focus on 18, 19, and 20 received date now..seems to be the biggest void of approvals. And glad to see an approval in the morning again. Was seeming like all we'd ever get in mornings was RFEs.

Sorry to hear that, I hope it is a simple RFE that can be responded to very quickly.

There have been so many RFEs lately, I'm starting to get the feeling that you can get a RFE for submitting a petition at all!

"Request for Evidenc. Reason: Petition Exists"

haha. It seems that way. They really don't like K1s.

Here is what the message from the USCIS website says

On July 30, 2012, we mailed a notice requesting initial evidence in this case. Please follow the instructions on the notice to submit the evidence requested. Meanwhile, processing of this case is on hold until we either receive the evidence or the opportunity to submit it expires. Once you submit the evidence requested and a decision is made, you will be notified by mail. If you move while this case is pending, please use our Change of Address online tool to update your case with your new address or call our customer service center at 1-800-375-5283.

sorry to hear that man..it seems to be the trend that RFEs come out in the morning now..no clue why..any idea what it could be?

Thank you guys!!! Approved!!!! Will write a proper review later but had a really good experience, no problems, very nice interviewer who asked the usual things (how we met, whether i wanted to work in US, if we'd spent much time with each others families, when our wedding was planned for). I was wiping away tears when she said i was approved and she said "stop it, or i'll start too!".

Called Andrew to tell him and I'm pretty sure he will need to be told all over again when he actually wakes up, i think he was sleep-skyping!

Thank you for all your support, jan filers, you all rock I don't think it's sunk in yet but right now i'm gonna have a big glass of irish champagne (TEA!) xxxx

Congratulations! It's great to see that everything went well at the interview. Now the real fun begins. No more waiting around to be with the person you love. Although the journey continues, the worst is over, and I guess helps us all to remember all things shall pass. Congrats again

Paul, we all feel your frustration bud. Hang in there its sooo close. For some reason after i see you approved im going to feel like im next ( im from March)

Thanks man. Yes. I hope you will get a speedy approval. No one should ever be waiting this long. I think things will have improved when they get to your petitions. At least I'm seeing some activity around my petition now. Just hoping for a good result. Maybe they're working on my batch today...Maybe this week really will be it.

Oh god..saw some movement around my petition. And it's a good old: Request for Evidence. Keeping with the morning trend I suppose. First movement I've seen since July 11th...So we have a 1/18 RFE today for July 30. Hope that's not the start of a disappointing trend..Really hope I'll just get out of this with an approval...My attorney will have been useless otherwise.

wish we had filed some other time too... we were just so unlucky! 192 days now, for you 194... I checked a lot of timelines and it looks like there weren't many that hit 7 months... if we knew, we would have got married and go CR1 way, at least that way the wait would be similar but we wouldn't be wasting more time and money on AOS... oh well we are still in a learning process...

Exactly. I really regret that I did not get married and just go CR1. It would have saved money and time. And although the processing times can always vary, I just feel like they take the CR1 more seriously. (Both elected representatives and USCIS) I know some people have advocated just eliminating the K1 completely because although we're all very serious about it here, so many people file the K1 petition incorrectly or randomly and just slow down the whole system. Guess I just had a little more faith in the USA since it's been the immigrant capital of the world for so long...But now it's a very hard dose of reality. I really haven't seen too many petitions go into the 200s. I want to believe it will finally be over this week...but something tells me we're in for it, it's going to be a struggle to the end. Don't know how or why this happening...But it's bad. Well I know what the bottom feels like in this process now. I think I've finally reached it. California is pumping these out in 120-130 days. And we're literally waiting into the 200s now..This is crazy. The imbalance before never reached this level. Heck CSC has never allowed its average processing time to increase above the 180s for the K1..did everyone at VSC just quit their job or something? Last time this happened there was a labor problem..

yeah exactly! they keep looking for excuses, like I130 petition being concentrated on right now... Ok it's fine but why do we see people from end of Jan/ beginning of Feb being approved... if they are concentrating on I130 we should see no movements at all! That is why I don't believe that, it's just a response to keep us "happy"... I am really not coping well with all this...I hit the bottom I think...

I've hit rock bottom too. There's only so many times you can receive their random excuses before you really start feeling complete and utter despair. They have no reason to focus on I-130s. Why in the world would they being doing that with the backlog that they have on K1s? It's just an attempt to placate and deflect any questions again. Keep us all submissive just like how they advanced the processing date a mere week from the 9th to the 16th after working on that one week for about 1 and a half months. Things are so bad right now that when they really do start approving we are going to see close to the worst average processing time ever on Visajourney. It's got to be at least in the 180s now. Guess they're going for their 189 day record again... ..It seems they answer to no one. We're certainly going to set the record for the largest thread here at some point. But unfortunately, it's not normal. It shouldn't be like this...wish I had filed just a week earlier and this would have been maybe done by now...

Paul there are still like 12 petitions from January 5 and a few from each day at the beginning of the month that haven't been touched!!! It is really crazy at this point, they are going towards 7 months this week! I just have no words for all this... Looks like RFE would be good enough as long as I know we have some chances to be approved at all!

Yes. that's what really scares me..I just don't like the movement (or lack thereof) that I've seen in my batch..Last petition approved around me was July 11. and other major approvals happened June 29th..a month ago now...I'm preparing to get my Senator involved soon if I can't receive a satisfactory update from my Congressman...I'm wondering if the Congressman's lack of experience dealing with USCIS is going to render them pretty useless in this endeavor. It's all just very bizarre. And 200 is looking good to me now. And that is a scary thing to imagine...I just still can't believe this all happening..I really hope I can have some good news this week..Don't know what the issue is with adjudicating petitions from 1/18...but it's definitely scaring me. And everyone else who filed here has also been done a disservice. It's honestly embarrassing and really should not be happening. It's not like this service was free either...

Absolutely outrageous. Where do I need to sign? Even more painful is seeing people at CSC with dates way past ours getting approvals.

Paul86, I hope you've called the Customer Service line and demanded a level 2 supervisor. You should've been processed long ago.

Yes. They seem to answer to no one. And apparently could care less about the pain inflicted on those who are separated from the person they love. I had very humble expectations and honestly an approval by the end of July would have even been okay. But now it's not even looking like that's going to happen. Approaching 200 days and it seems like it's become Vermont Sadistic Center with this kind of torture. It's the worst experience I've ever had with a service that I actually had to pay for..I have not ever had to interact with a company, agency, or other venue that does this to people...

as for the rest of us still waiting,I just checked and no movements yet...

Hope they can get some adjudications in today...Can't believe they've been working at this rate and still have the audacity to keep a 5 months processing time on the website. I really hope this is over soon. This has to be a good week for all of us here. I thought we could only go up in progress from the horrible week we had before..Let's hope they can deliver some mercy at this point and stop torturing us all like this...It was Vermont Disservice Center. Hopefully, it doesn't have to become Vermont Sadistic Center...It's moving toward that at this point with these processing times. It's deplorable.

VSC Stats

Strange that VSC is reporting they are processing more than CSC? The trend is going up but they are months behind. What?!

How does this make sense?

Just like the newsletter info where they blamed their low production on people submitting data without an RFE or coverletter. I wonder what is really going on up there.

It seems like no one knows...It's pretty scary...Many of us will be looking at 200+ days after this week. No answers, no consistency. It's really sad.

I agree.

as do I. But 194 days this Monday with no end in sight is getting concerning. It's a nightmare. I can't understand why this is being done to us all. There's absolutely no accountability and very little effort to communicate consistent information to those that have filed petitions. I've never seen anything like this anytime or anywhere. They have a way to stall or deflect any attempt to get answers or move this process along. It's like our petitions are a big joke, and they don't care. It's very depressing. They won't even let us do service requests at VSC. It took them 1.5 months just to move the processing date ahead 1 week..