M&Y_2019

Status changed today from fingerprints to "New Card is Being Produced" 🙂. No approval message but assume this means that will be coming as well. Receipt date is 1/10/2023 with no N400 filed, just I-751.

That’s probably it. I just checked, and the earliest date that we can submit an inquiry was pushed more than a year after the date which previously displayed.

I noticed this today. We used to be able to select our specific Service Center on the official USCIS processing page. It has now been replaced with a generic "All Service Centers" option. It's disheartening because our service center previously had a far lower processing time (according to their own data in the prior 6 months) than the overall average across all service centers. Could they be consolidating I-751s or moving them to different Service Centers? I don't see why they would remove this option.

I've been tracking the progress of ROC approvals using the data, albeit limited, we have available on VisaJourney. For example, I've filtered this page to only show the Nebraska Service Center (where our case is) and then sorted by Filed Date: https://www.visajourney.com/timeline/liftlist.php?cfl=0&op1=1&op2=d&op3=&op4=1&op5=5,9,10,11,12&op6=Nebraska Service Center As of today, if you go to pages 8 and 9, you can see there is a clear cut off in which cases with with NOA dates of December 2022 and earlier (page 9) have mostly all been approved, regardless of whether N400 was submitted. Cases with NOA dates of January 2023 and later ( page 8 ) have mostly not been approved. The very few cases with an NOA date of January 2023 or later that have been approved seem to be due to an N400 filing. The approvals for cases with NOA dates up to December 2022 were being issued at a steady pace by USCIS through May 2024. At that point, this service center seems to have cut off approvals. Rather than continuing at the same pace, there have been essentially no case approvals in June or July 2024. I was expecting that ours, with an NOA month of January 2023 with no N400 planned, would likely be up next, but it seems we've gotten unlucky and USCIS has taken a pause for some unknown reason on basically all cases with NOA of January 2023. Has anyone seen something like this before? Is it a "lull" due to employee summer vacations, or could they have decided not to continue with cases with NOA of January 2023 or later for other reasons? I know we can only speculate, but that is why I made this thread :).

Yeah - the N-400 factor in possibly speeding up ROC cases does make this even harder to predict. I do want to research and understand the reasoning behind the I-751 process at some point. I'm not aware of any other countries having a "conditional" permanent residence prior to the "real" one. For example, in Japan, you apply for PR when eligible and you get it. There's no "intermediary, conditional PR". Temporary permanent residence is almost an oxymoron. It seems like the US Congress and USCIS just imposed this extra administrative burden on themselves for little reason. Unfortunately, due to Japan's rules on citizenship, my spouse would be automatically deprived of Japanese citizenship upon obtaining US citizenship, making N-400 a complete non-starter. We will just have to wait out ROC with no N-400.

I think for now, we are inclined to wait out the ROC, and then consider moving with the 10 year GC in-hand to reduce the risk of separation. The processing time for a Japan residency application would be unlikely to exceed 6 months, and certainly not a year. That said, I thought a re-entry permit typically allowed the green card holder up to two years outside of the US without abandonment?

Indeed. We have been thinking this over for an extended period and it is quite difficult to decide. They have re-used prior biometrics for this case. Also, I believe the LIN service center is one that tends not to do interviews (from what others have reported here) or at least it is very unlikely, having adjusted from K1 and interviewed for AOS. That said, if we needed to return for either of those things we could. Though, it would problematic if the interview occurs during my Japan residency application. My spouse would be able to leave Japan, but I (the USC) would not without canceling the Japan-side application. The application should take at most 3-5 months according to an immigration attorney. Where would they send the interview notice, or the green card itself if approved? We would have to change our address, but would they mail to a foreign address?

Good morning all, I do apologize for making two threads, but the topics are sufficiently different than it didn't make sense to include both in one. We are considering leaving the US and moving to my spouse's home country as soon as August, but have not decided on this. That said, we are not sure the move would be long-term. We may want to (or have to) come back depending on how the visa process works out in that country. If my residency application is not approved for example, we would be coming back to the US within a few months. In order to apply for the particular visa we are looking at, I'm required to be physically present in Japan - it cannot be done through an embassy here in the US. It would be several months before I'd find out if I'm approved and can remain in Japan. My spouse has pending ROC filed last year January 2023 and has the 48-months extension letter. I've tried to research this, but there is very little info on how pending ROC works if we leave the country. This is the main the reason I'm interested in ROC approval estimates for LIN as the Nebraska Service Center seems to be quicker than others. If we go by USCIS processing time estimates, our application could be approved around July of this year. VisaJourney is estimating February 2025. If anyone can assist with the following questions, it would be much appreciated: If we do move prior to approval and file an address change with USCIS and include a foreign address, will that result in the ROC being denied or cancelled? I assume we cannot use a relative's US mailing address, as we would not be physically present there - or can we? Do we simply have to withdraw the ROC if we move out of the US and then have my spouse file for IR-1 if we ever move back? This would be extremely problematic if my residency in Japan is not approved (unlikely, but possible) as it would result in us being separated. What if we apply for a re-entry permit during ROC? At this point, we are really stuck on whether we should just wait out ROC approval, apply for a re-entry permit first, and then consider leaving. Some days we want to wait it out, and other days we question whether to keep putting our lives on hold for USCIS, as we could potentially be waiting years for ROC approval by what some on this forum have described. Others have suggested using N400 to "speed" up the process, but that is not a consideration for us as Japan does not allow dual citizenship.

Not expecting either to be very accurate. Although I will say, the VisaJourney prediction turned out to be quite accurate for both our K1 and AOS. I believe it was approved the same week. That said, @powerpuff I'm still confused why VJ is showing only two service centers on this page https://www.visajourney.com/times/ Those two service centers also have different dates next to them as well, so it seems there is some filtering being done based on service center, contrary to what was stated. I-751 is processed by five different service centers.

Thanks! Just trying to get a sense of whether it was USCIS or VisaJourney that's more accurate. Wouldn't it make more sense for VisaJourney to average based on approval time by service center, instead of by averaging approval time across all? With the wildly varying processing times between different service centers, that would seem more appropriate.

We currently have pending ROC with LIN (Nebraska Service Center). The USCIS processing time for this service center shows 80% of cases approved with 18 months. This is the quickest of all service centers I checked as some are almost double that. There are also many recent data points on this site showing approvals 14-16 months post-receipt date for LIN. That said, I keep receiving emails from VisaJourney stating that our approval estimate is late February 2025, which puts us at 25 months. What is this data based on? Is it drawing on data from all service centers and thus not factoring that LIN is faster than the others? In addition, why does the https://www.visajourney.com/times/ page only show CSC and VSC for I-751, when there are many other service centers?

My understanding from reading about this prior so that Global Entry does not update anything based on extension letters - not until you get your 10 year green card. While the I-751 is pending, our belief was you can attempt to use the kiosk (some have reported it works regardless) but will probably have to have the officer manually admit you in the global entry line by showing the expired green card and extension letter. I expected we’d have to talk to the officer. What I didn’t expect was the extreme frustration and seeming characterization as a liars trying to enter without actually having global entry. I don’t see why they couldn’t see his global entry based on his expired green card.

Very poor experience arriving back at SFO with global entry (which both of us have) and I-751 pending, expired GC and extension letter. My spouse tried to take his picture and scan his expired green card at the global entry kiosk and it just flashed “see officer”. Went to the officer who was extremely rude and impatient. He seemed to think my spouse was lying about having global entry, as he said “it isn’t showing up in the system.” I explained that we used it just four months earlier before the green card expired with no issues, to which he continued to act frustrated and implied we were lying about having my spouse having it. He seemed to think I was the only who had it and I was trying to bring my spouse along. It was just then that I remembered we brought the global entry cards (the ones that they say you “don’t need” to carry with you), which my spouse showed the officer. That seemed to finally get him to believe us. I’m so glad we brought those just in case, turned out to be very useful. After that he said “you need to have global entry update your information as it does not show in the system” but he let us through. I don’t understand what he means - I didn’t think global entry updates anything based on extension letters. Did they really “unregister” his expired green card from his global entry profile to the point that *nothing* shows up when they scan it? It was an awful welcome back to the US after a two week trip abroad in my spouse’s home country. I don’t understand why they have to be so nasty about everything.

Unable to find delete option - editing this post

Very poor experience arriving back at SFO with global entry (which both of us have). My spouse tried to take his picture and scan his expired green card at the global entry kiosk and it just flashed “see officer”. Went to the officer who was extremely rude and impatient. He seemed to think my spouse was lying about having global entry at all, as he said “it wasn’t showing up in the system.” I explained that we used it just four months earlier before the green card expired with no issues, to which he continued to act frustrated and implied we were lying about having my spouse having it. He seemed to think I was the only who had it and I was trying to bring my spouse along. It was just then that I remember we brought the global entry cards (the ones that they say you “don’t need” to carry with you), which my spouse showed the officer. That seemed to finally get him to believe us. I’m so glad we brought those just in case, turned about to be very useful. After that he said “you need to have global entry update your information as it does not show in the system” but he let us through. I don’t understand what he means - I didn’t think global entry updates anything based on extension letters. Did they really “unregister” his expired green card from his global entry profile to the point that *nothing* shows up when they scan it? It was an awful welcome back to the US after a two week trip abroad in my spouse’s home country. I don’t understand why they have to be so nasty about everything.