Nikobe

2-3 months from NOA2

Also, USCIS tracks their own progress differently on an internal basis. Internally, they use cycle times to track progress instead of using the commonly reported percentages of past adjudicated cases. FYI for whomever really understands it: "A cycle time measures how many months’ worth of pending cases for a particular form are awaiting a decision. Cycle times are what the operational divisions of USCIS use to gauge how much progress the agency is making on reducing our backlog and overall case processing times." I assume what this means is that they look at the open cases number, which is currently roughly 50k and then measure how much time it would take them to process the cases at their current speed (~5k a month). Their current cycle time would then be 10 months.

Not sure if it helps but most European countries have an online registration for police certificates (e.g. Germany and Denmark in my case). I know that Italy is a bureaucratic nightmare but I hope they have something similar or at least you can obtain one through the embassy.

Sorry to go off topic but does anybody have a good overview about what vaccines are required for the medical appointment? Also, is there any information on when to schedule this / what to expect?

That is so random. Why are there late Feb groups (54500/56000) that contain more adjudicated cases than early Feb groups (47000)? Obviously, this is not an actual question, but shows to me that there is literally zero pattern and even the theory of late month filers being left behind will most likely lack some evidence (as a May 31st filer, I am probably biased 🤪 ).

They kicked off April. It took them roughly four weeks to go from March to April, so we should see the first wave of approvals around the end of this month. Realistically, I think June will be the month for early May filers and July/August will be the month for the late May filers.

Hi Sarah, I am not sure whether you read my message. I did not write about certainty and specifically mentioned an example from past months. I wrote that January filers are at 95% touched, which I used to instill hope to those who are still waiting. This is literally all and yes, those 5% are people, too. I know that. 😅 January has 152 (!) untouched cases after 15 months. Never forget that you should always take the USCIS estimate as a base case, which is 16.5 months of wait. Everybody who gets approval earlier than that is lucky, but those who are still waiting are in line with the normal processing time.

Your case will go from received to request for evidence to request for evidence response to (hopefully) approved. From what I have heard, most RFEs take max. a month until approval (if you respond in a fast manner). USCIS has touched 83% of cases for February and 95% of cases for January, so don't be worried if you haven't heard anything. They will touch those additional 12% also for February within the month of May.

Ok, I have never heard about this actually - thank you!

You probably misread the chart. The chart is the estimate of when the National Visa Center receives the case from the USCIS after NOA2. The embassies are not yet in play at that point in the process. The NVC is actually responsible to hand the case over to the responsible embassies, but that’s a subsequent step in the process. Current estimates on VJ: NOA2 -> NVC: 49 days NVC Processing: 29 days NVC -> Embassy/Consulate: 8 days Consulate Processing: 55 days The last step is dependent on a lot of factors including your own preparation, availability of medical appointments and visa appointments at the embassy.

Ironically, that’s 6 months right now But yeah, it’s a FY measurement.

For whatever it is worth: The median processing times reported by USCIS dropped “drastically” ( ) to 14.5 from 14.6 when they included March.

That was not my intention. But you’re asking about average 190 after one of the best weeks since January, which also averaged over 230 cases per day. So, I guess more confused about the question. Later I saw that you simply did not see the averages in the progressing report. So, then your question makes more sense, I guess. We’ re all in this together as you say and I am trying to say that you should not excessively worry about single days. Could have written it down in more sentences, I admit!

Respectfully, you're overthinking.

No, it is not taking longer than normal. The process takes roughly 45 days until receipt by NVC and that processing time has been around for quite some time. People are now "complaining" at the 30 day mark, which is surprising given the amount of time these users spend on VJ. In case you're interested in the current approx. processing times, see the below link. It currently takes an average of 160 days after NOA2 to receive approval.

I would say around 4 months for the steps after approval. Most European embassies are pretty fast, but the NVC process still takes some time (2-3 months).

Honestly, I agree. There must be something going on that has nothing to do with processing (e.g. training days, system issues, decrease in transparency, switch to weekly system updates etc.). I would be more concerned with lower approval numbers (i.e. signs that this is just a downturn) rather than seeing zeros.

Estimated Wait Time tab on the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sN2bo1xZhs8oVU6-QDUdBXBX2_ci8_QJ0wiz59Gp6H4/edit#gid=1603169151 Just note that no month will ever go down to zero and usually they start new months when it says roughly 2-3 months. For instance, May is at 4.0 months until processed according to the recent trend of 4,500 cases processed per month. This concerns 100% of the cases. They will start May in roughly 1-2 months in accordance with what I mentioned above.

"This processing time is based on how long it took us to complete 80% of adjudicated cases over the past six months." This means that as of end of February, 80% of cases that were adjudicated from September 2022 until February 2023 took 16.5 months. This is not a forward looking metric but a historic one. Our fellow data geeks are however looking at forward looking metrics. It is apples and oranges, or at least green and red apples - just not super comparable.

Wow, you were right. They are actively going for March! Let’s go!

Ronald, kind advice: Back it up with data . This is such an emotionally distressed forum that does not need more wise words, to be honest. Yes, there are random March approvals, but there are also random April and May approvals (it is expedites or just "real randoms"). A trend is, however, not defined by its outliers but by the bulk of data points. Stick to the data that is widely accepted by most in the forum (e.g. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sN2bo1xZhs8oVU6-QDUdBXBX2_ci8_QJ0wiz59Gp6H4/edit#gid=915902491) and kindly just suffer with us. 😅

The currently most active range is mid February (cf. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15yTdQDjmS6ik3bPNGmThSc0jFUszsiGcXurI1hT_Jcw/edit#gid=0). I would not expect activity for March for another week, more likely two (50% processed for Feb (cf. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sN2bo1xZhs8oVU6-QDUdBXBX2_ci8_QJ0wiz59Gp6H4/edit#gid=915902491)).

Also, don't overcomplicate matters in the process. If you meet the requirements through your salary only, you don't need submit more evidence. You don't need to "impress" them. They just need to check the box.

I am not sure what you expect from the Q1 report. It is going to be terrible numbers because they only sped up in January. 🤪

https://egov.uscis.gov/processing-times/historic-pt