meladee

Here's a fun one, Lawfully updated their # of processing days for each quartile of each month this week. I've put them all here. Between Nov 2021 cases and Apr 2022 case, the time to process 25% went down 55 days The gap between 25% and 50% has been pretty consistently at 16 days, but there's still a significant gap from 50%-75% (which has been around 80-100 days in the last year) I also put together the % processed for every month here. It helps to visualise what we've already been discussing : The first 50% is processed quickly, then the rest drags out There are a lot more months in the active range (10-84% processed) than there used to be

If you're living in the US it's super easy to change, there is just an online form: https://egov.uscis.gov/coa/displayCOAForm.do

Can you clarify where you're getting your police clearance from? (We'd also appreciate if you'd fill in a timeline, having more timelines in the database is valuable for the community!) You can read about specific requirements for different documents here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/Visa-Reciprocity-and-Civil-Documents-by-Country.html Just select your country using the menu on the left.

We can look at this with the official quarterly data from USCIS (I've aggregated it here), and the denial rate was definitely higher in FY22 than FY21. However, because so many denials are just submissions that are improperly filed, this could partially just be due to the increase in filings.

So I was ON POINT for May 2022 cases, they started processing exactly on 17 May! Hopefully we stay on pace and see June 2022 cases start being processed on about 8 June, and half of us have our cases touched by 28 June!

The term she would violate that makes her inadmissable is the previously mentioned requirement: an alien having a residence in a foreign country which he has no intention of abandoning,

Correct, if she doesn't at the time of entry meet the requirements of the F-1 visa, she would be inadmissable and wouldn't be able to return for 5 years. Source:

The legal definition of an F-1 visa holder: By the definition, your fiance would not be eligible because they intend to abandon their residence in the foreign country.

That's fair -- if they're actually being rude, that's different. But if they're giving advice based on their actual lived experience, then they can't help that their exerperience was negative.

All of the Fiance i-129F forms are processed in California (except if the US citizen has been convicted of an offense against a minor, then it gets forwarded to Vermont eventually). Here's the source from USCIS: https://www.uscis.gov/forms/all-forms/service-center-forms-processing The other places are adjudicating K-3 or K-4, so their processing times don't apply to the K-1.

I understand having the gut reaction of "why are these people so negative?!" but anyone who has filed after ~June 2022 is coming from a place of privilege, where we've mostly seen the processing rates increase & processing times decrease, and are likely to get approved within the window we expected. I honestly cannot imagine having started this process with the expectation of 8-9-10 months and then actually experiencing 14-15-16 months instead. They aren't being negative because they want to poop on everyone's parade, they believe they're being reasitic because it happened to them. What they would have given to not have those months of disappointment and frustration! I am empathetic to their lived experience and understand why they have the point of view they do.

There were some mixed opinions on this previous thread, but I would think 1.

I'm not really familiar with the consulate process, but there are a bunch of embassy details here that might be helpful: https://www.visajourney.com/consulates/index.php?ctry=Nigeria&cty=Lagos

For an idea of the K-1 visa proportions, here's the number of K-1 Visa Issuances by Consulate. I've added region sums at the bottom. Basically it's 37% South/Latin America, 30% Asia and Pacific, 17% Europe, 11% Africa, 5% everywhere else.

See the "If You Can’t Meet the Minimum Income Requirements" section here: https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green-card-processes-and-procedures/affidavit-of-support $37,500 - $34,000 = $3,500 $3,500 x 5 = $17,500 in assets needed

🎉🎉🎉 So excititing! One small change though, May 29 is a US holiday so it's 22 working days in May.

There's no specific guidance -- this isn't explicity part of the K-1 visa requirements, but it's the format some consulates choose to use as evidence for the consular officer that they are not likely to become a public charge in the United States. (ref) That's why we defer to the requirements we know that will need to be satisfied later in the process. 3x for spouse, so 73,950 for a household of 2. @April Tian Here is the actual field manual for how consular officers are supposed to review this requirement.

Based on this VJ page: "While there are no specific income requirements listed in the I-134 form directions, you will be judged by the same criteria as the I-864 form requirements when they are issuing the visa at the foreign US consulate, so provide financial information for the I-134 with those guidelines in mind." For the I-864 criteria for using assets, see the section "If You Can’t Meet the Minimum Income Requirements" here. Overall, I-134 is a tool that consular officers use to determine whether or not your fiance is likely to become a public charge in the United States. Like a lot of this process, it comes down to the judgement from the officer, which is unfortunately why no one can give you a 100% answer, and just point your toward options that maximise your chances of success. So stack the deck in your favour the best you can!

From the insane amount of time I've spent looking at tracking spreadsheets, my current hopeful personal estimate is June 28 based on the following: They processed January cases for 14 business days before moving on to February, which they processed for 11 business days before moving on to March, which they processed for 16 business days before moving on to April. Jan & Feb were lighter months and March was huge, so I expect it to stay around 15 business days, which would put the first May cases touched at 17 May and the first June cases touched at 8 June. They touch 50% of cases in that 15-day period, so we'll have a 50% chance of having an approval or RFE by 28 June. Of course there's a lot more nuance we can add. My other detailed tracking that is more grounded and less "hopeful" is close to the VJ timeline, but I want to believe!

Ah, so it looks like this is the source, and the follow up tweet also mentions that specifically they are already people who do asylum processing:

I can't find the announcement for this, can you share the link? For what it's worth, this sounds like their standard procedure as addressed in the letter I linked above. So they're likely moving around workers who specifically are already asylum officers, and instead of adjudicating the asylum backlog they'll be working on cases at the border.

I'm not one of the script runners, but this is the one I see referenced most frequently: https://github.com/vicdus/uscis-case-statistics/

They've still done a lot of hiring and process improvement to improve asylum processing, just not as much as they wanted. However, humanitrian cases seem to be managed separately than other immigration benefits anyway (specifically by asylum officers). Here's the last response I've seen them address the asylum backlog in: https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/foia/Asylum_backlog-Representative_Barr.pdf

Actually redacting my own post, because I'm reading more and this actually didn't make it into the final appropriations act 😬

As someone who nerded out hard and read all of the bills around USCIS funding for the last few years, I don't think you need to be too worried about the impact at USCIS if there is a surge -- they anticipated it and have addressed it with additional funding & resourcing. From the budget bill: