Hi everyone!
Thank you again for sharing your experiences. I’d like to share an update. I reached out to my local state senator for a congressional inquiry about two weeks ago following Laurie’s example in contacting a local senator. On 4/21 (the following week), I received an I-797 Notice of Action from USCIS/California Service center approving our I-130 petition. Our case was originally assigned to Texas Service Center so they must have transferred it at some point. They are now sending our case to the U. S. Department of State National Visa Center. They state, “You should allow them a minimum of 45 days of processing before contacting the NVC.”
I checked our case history again on USCIS’s website. It looks that they reviewed and approved our petition on April 18th. To clarify, our petition had never been in “Active Review” until April 18th. My husband and I do think that our senator’s congressional inquiry helped us. As many of you have shared, it’s been confusing and frustrating waiting this long without updates or progress. We hope that the next stages in this visa process can be completed without further delay or issues. Although I understand that the next steps aren’t timely. I’m incredibly thankful for this Visa Journey forum for the solidarity and communication. I look forward to hearing about progress happening for everyone! I’ll continue to provide updates. All the best!