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EAD/AP approved now! Still waiting on I-485 - we were hoping after returning the medical and the marriage certificate they somehow lost that they'd skip the EAD and just approve the GC. Ah well.

oh yeah I didn't get that. we're calling trying to get the one local CS to get us in within 2 months.

We didn't get a notice before, just a "please send us this". What did your pre-notice look like? There's only 1 in range of us so we have one choice, unless we feel like taking a train or bus for a couple hours. (Which we would do for the interview in Buffalo but would be expensive and effortful given an overnight stay in a hotel, and that pricing difference would outweigh savings most likely.)

Hi folks, In a bit of confusion here. My partner got his medical done for the K-1 in December 2021. He had an interview first because of timing (Melbourne actually told him to take any medical slot he would get and if it was after, that was fine.) They did not give him anything, they said they'd send it to the consulate. He received an approval before February 2022, and a sealed packet later with instructions to give it to the CBP person at point of entry. Presumably this held the medical info inside of it. When we applied for AOS, we double-checked the form that stated as long as that overseas medical AOS application had been done a year before the AOS submission, it would count. When it was December 2022, I called USCIS and spoke to an agent saying, "hi, it says 1 year validity, but we're at the 1 year mark now and our case hasn't been seen, what do we do?" and the agent told us that they would be seen as valid for 2 years, so we didn't need to give them the I-693. We took them at their word for this. Now we have the RFE request for the I-693. The problem is, we don't have one to give them. The envelope from the medical went straight to the embassy, he was not given anything outside of it (like the CD or apparently the photocopy of the vax record / the I-693). He was sent the sealed packet to supply at POE, but when he arrived in April 2022, the CBP person took the sealed envelope and kept it; he didn't get anything from inside it back. So we assumed that that meant they have all the data on file already. So we don't have a DS-3025 form, because the medical center in Melbourne didn't give him one, and he wasn't given back the sealed packet at POE which might have had it. Do we need to do a full I-693 again? We have a copy of his Australian vaccination records, and we know they had done the medical and can approve him, so can we call the civil surgeon and get them to just fill out the vax paperwork? Per the I-693 instructions, And we're pretty sure he falls under that. OTOH, the RFE doesn't specify vaccination, it just says, So that makes it sound like they want a whole new one, which feels crazy to us because he had one 13 months ago. Is it better to be safe and get the whole new exam ? We considered calling Melbourne to see if they have a copy on hand of the old exam but then it would be on the wrong form. And why did they not provide a copy of the vaccine record and the CD? Also, was it standard for the CBP officer at entry to take the whole packet and give us nothing back? If so, what happened to all the evidence in that packet, shouldn't it have gotten scanned in somewhere? Should it have been given back to us so we could use the medical from inside it?

Update: no action on EAD/AP, but we got the request for the I-693 medical form today. It wants a sealed copy of one. But he did the K-1 exam overseas already and got this handled, AND we were told there's an extended validity due to processing time.

We just got the same request 😕 He had his medical exam done as a K-1 before his interview and we were told as long as we filed the AOS immediately they wouldn't ask for this. The RFE isn't asking for only the vaccination page... do we really need a full appt, again? we'd included a scan of the vax page with it.

There's May in there too, I'm IOE-09-163 and we're May, and yes we've noticed that we're getting proportionally far less approved than later cases. I reached out to my congressman with that.

If you check the Documents tab it might tell you if it's single or combo.

My husband has been waiting since May for even EAD/AP. I think it's absolutely luck of the draw as to who gets biometrics -> approval very quickly and who waits months; maybe it's the case officer who does the biometrics and how they feel that day or how empowered they are (maybe some are tier 1 and can just do the taking of them, some can do approving). Speaking very broadly: I'm trying to be happy for everyone else because I know we're all equally worthy of getting approved, and honestly EAD/AP approval SHOULD be happening within 3 months. But it's so demoralizing to see people in Dec getting next-day when I've been waiting 200+, you know? What I have noticed via trackers like Hilites and CaseStatusExt is that there seem to have been a lot of within-1-week approvals of cases later in the year (Oct, Nov, Dec) than of the mid-year or early ones. Looking at my bracket, IOE-09-163: 12,237 in Pending ; 3, 729 Approved ; 117 Rejected ; 89 RFE Looking at the 179 bracket: 14,133 Pending ; 19,132 Approved ; 1,642 Rejected ; 486 RFE The 179 bracket is later, and more are Approved in that bracket than are Pending in mine. Assuming that IOE brackets are sequential (that 160s were submitted before 170s), that seems incredibly unfair that the new ones have an almost 50% approval rate and older ones are less than 30%. I wish that a: USCIS did everything faster for ALL of us, and b: that they appeared more committed to first-in-first-out and reducing the backlogs of months old cases rather than "approve all the new ones to make stats go down". That's farirer than this current scattershot "some people wait 11 months and some wait 2 weeks". The lack of transparency as to if it's in any kind of order is what's so maddening.

I can't believe how fast they're issuing you December ones Good for y'all!

Feeling extremely disheartened as I look things up to find that there's visual evidence of how much is being approved in later ranges than in mine... I'm assuming other May filers are in the 09-16X range with me? It feels completely unfair they're approving some right after biometrics and making others wait 6+ months, I feel like it should be a universal short-term approval for work and travel when you get in on K-1 that can be revoked up if they see trouble - start from assuming they'll be good and take away from fraudsters rather than have to manually ascertain. The red flags would be found in the 485 process then. A man can dream.

The concept of date order is so ridiculous when there are trends showing which case groups are moving far more quickly.

That would not surprise me and is also really depressing.

Thank you, I knew about hilites but I'd never seen the first one! It is shocking to me 09-17 has so many more approvals-per-total than my 09-16. 09-177 has more approvals than pending, whereas the ratio is not even a quarter for my 09-163. Really puts the lie to the FIFO idea that they work in sequence!

What trackers? I'd love to see movement on the 09-163 group soon. Also, congrats!

Mine has said past due for awhile now. Seeing other mays approved as well as many that were same-day-as-biometric approved in Aug/Sep and am feeling jealous. Hoping for action soon.

We've also been trying to get an expedited AP, asking a congressman to help, and no dice yet.

I'm so impressed by and jealous of those folks who got EAD same day, I wonder why that happens for some folks and for others it takes months? They seem so random...

Happy holidays to you too and thank you!

I'd emailed my congressional rep asking for help, but today I called the office and said "I filed via email and sent you the privacy waiver you requested to check in on this case in November and haven't heard anything from you or them, please check in and give me a call back". The staffer said that they haven't gotten timely responses from USCIS in months.

I hear NYC is really bad, but in comparison Buffalo is way better. Glad I'm not in NYC or LA though!

My 3 cases were showing as separate items in the panel, and now the I-131 and I-765 are showing as "concurrent" with the linked symbol, so I'm hoping this means that 1: it'll happen soon and 2: be a combo card.

Well something interesting just happened. Previously when I logged into our myUSCIS accounts, it showed the I-485 and I-131 and I-764 all as separate instances, even though everything was filed the same day. Logged in now and I see that I-131 update address reminder, and now the I-131 and I-764 are tied together and listed as concurrent. I wonder if that means they're going to grant the combo, and also if that means it'll be granted soon (because it did not look like this on Wednesday).

You won't. I called USCIS last week to check that b/c his medical was a full year ago today. The representative says that the medical is now valid for TWO years b/c of the backlog, so he's fine.

same situation for me and my partner - Australia's borders were closed to entry and also to exit. That interrupted our planned visit for a 3 month living together trial and engagement, and meant we couldn't meet up in either country or a 3rd one to get married for the CR-1, so K-1 was our only option. It's frustrating to hear "shouldn't have done K-1" when there was no choice. On topic: My partner is so very tired of being at home. He can't drive for medical reasons, so he's only using transit to get around. He visited online friends who live in the states for a couple weeks, but otherwise he's just been here. We've gone to sports games together and we've toured museums and done activities on the weekends that way he's getting to know the city. The first two months he was fine starting to settle in and he started taking over household tasks. After that he picked back up hobbies he hadn't time for while doing his masters' - he wrote a novel, he's working on a video game mod, he's playing a lot of games. But now it's been 7 months since filing and 6 since biometrics ; we have seen other people get EAD and AP very close to their biometric dates ; and it's the winter holidays. He wants to be working but he wants even more to just go home for the holidays and he can't. I told him as soon as we get the AP we'll go.