JR_CG

We logged into our USCIS account and sent a request that way. A few days later we got a message back that our interview was going to be for 22 April. A few days later we received the official notice in our documents section. Our situation was different though in that we had received an email asking us to pick two dates from a list of seven possible weeks as we are overseas and flying to DC for the interview (and hopefully oath on the same day). over the past year I’ve found that submitting a request through the USCIS account works better than calling USCIS. I reached out to my state representative and they were completely unhelpful.

We just received the interview scheduled notification letter in the USCIS inbox for the 22 April date! We are hoping that it’s approved and we can do the oath ceremony the same day as they often do on Tuesdays and also get an expedited passport appointment.

We sent USCIS a message through the website inbox and asked when we would hear back. We got a response last night saying that they looked into it and found that we are being scheduled for 22 April. We are still waiting on the official notice from the DC office, but that looks like good news!

We get to submit a preference for dates because we filed as 319b. As we are overseas and have to fly to the US for the interview, they try to give us some ability to plan the travel.

Since we received the email asking which two weeks we prefer, we haven’t heard anything back since. Is this normal? We asked for 24 March or 21 April at the DC office.

Ours maybe took a little longer because I don’t think we had biometrics that they could reuse. Overall the process seemed very fast compared to how long people wait to get the visa to enter the states. Here is the letter that was attached to the email that says what to bring for a 319B. 319(b) Interview Information.pdf

Just woke up to this email from USCIS!: “Greetings ! The Washington D.C. Field Office has received your N400 application(s) and is ready to schedule your interview. Select two weeks from the list below and we will schedule an interview. Week of March 3rd Week of March 17th Week of March 24th Week of March 31st Week of April 7th Week of April 14th Week of April 21st Week of April 28th Interviews will be scheduled for a Monday or Tuesday with ceremony same week if eligible for approval after your interview. Please respond ASAP no later than February 24, 2025 . Please do not make travel plans until you have received confirmation from this office indicating that your appointment notice can be found in your USCIS account. If you need information about expedited U.S. passport processing please visit the DOS Washington Passport Agency website. Military Spouses & GOV’T Civilian Spouses– Only spouses of Active Duty servicemembers are authorized to interview virtually while living abroad if they meet 3x3x3 requirement. You must be a married to a US citizen for three years, be a lawful permanent resident for three years, and been living with your USC spouse for three years. You may file up to 90 days early if you meet these requirements. If you do not meet these requirements or you are spouse of a civilian worker working for the federal government, you may file under INA 319b which requires an in-person appearance in the U.S. Please see links below. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-i-chapter-9 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-g-chapter-4 Respectfully, 319b/MIL Overseas Unit USCIS Washington D.C. Field Office“

Oh Happy Day! Woke up this morning to this email from USCIS: “Greetings ! The Washington D.C. Field Office has received your N400 application(s) and is ready to schedule your interview. Select two weeks from the list below and we will schedule an interview. Week of March 3rd Week of March 17th Week of March 24th Week of March 31st Week of April 7th Week of April 14th Week of April 21st Week of April 28th Interviews will be scheduled for a Monday or Tuesday with ceremony same week if eligible for approval after your interview. Please respond ASAP no later than February 24, 2025 . Please do not make travel plans until you have received confirmation from this office indicating that your appointment notice can be found in your USCIS account. If you need information about expedited U.S. passport processing please visit the DOS Washington Passport Agency website. Military Spouses & GOV’T Civilian Spouses– Only spouses of Active Duty servicemembers are authorized to interview virtually while living abroad if they meet 3x3x3 requirement. You must be a married to a US citizen for three years, be a lawful permanent resident for three years, and been living with your USC spouse for three years. You may file up to 90 days early if you meet these requirements. If you do not meet these requirements or you are spouse of a civilian worker working for the federal government, you may file under INA 319b which requires an in-person appearance in the U.S. Please see links below. https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-i-chapter-9 https://www.uscis.gov/policy-manual/volume-12-part-g-chapter-4 Respectfully, 319b/MIL Overseas Unit USCIS Washington D.C. Field Office”

Latest update: We drove the 7 hours to the USCIS International Field Office located in the consulate section of the US Embassy in Doha, Qatar. The Field Office is actually just two USCIS employees and the one who helped us was exceedingly nice and helpful. When we arrived she said that she was also ready to recreate her lost packet (the one we flew to DC to do). I wish she had let us know sooner but she said she had just received permission from higher for her to be able to do so. Oh well. The biometrics for the N-400 were uploaded and caused a status change in the USCIS account 90 minutes later. The fingerprint cards and photos we mailed still have yet to arrive. So I’m glad we were able to do it digitally in Doha on 29 December 2024. On 5 Jan 2025 we received her actual Green Card, I-551 in the mail, so that is a huge relief as it will make going through airports so much easier and now she feels official! I uploaded pictures of the card to her N-400 case online and am also glad that USCIS allows for document uploads like that. We are hopeful that her background checks will be complete by April based on the 10 week comment from the supervisor in DC!

We drove the 7 hours across the Saudi desert to Doha where the super helpful USCIS agent in the US Embassy took the picture and fingerprints digitally. Took about 20 minutes and 90 minutes later USCIS notified us (4 emails) that action has been taken and now the case says “actively being reviewed” 🤞🏻 The fingerprint cards/photos we mailed in have yet to arrive. Probably be smudged anyways.

When asking for fingerprints at an embassy, make sure you ask the RSO, the Regional Security Office, not the consulate section. The ACS, American Citizen Services section can also help you get in touch with the RSO.

How did it all turn out?

Submitted N-400 on 30 Nov under 319(b) as husband is military stationed in Saudi Arabia. Received RFE for Fingerprints on 13 Dec. Mailed fingerprint cards done by Provost Marshal on 15 December and also have an appointment for Biometrics at the USCIS Office in Doha, Qatar for 29 December as the mail sometimes takes a long time/gets lost, the cards might be smudged or not filled out correctly. We will see what’s faster. Spoke to the MilNatz team leader in DC and he said once the fingerprints are good the background check may take around ten weeks. And if the N-400 isn’t finalized before the military moves us, we will have to start over if we are stationed in the states, but won’t be eligible until Jan 2027. 🤞🏻🙏🏼

Update: Even with trying to get my congresswoman involved (Marilyn Strickland’s office never even called back. Each time I call they just say there is a caseworker assigned to it), the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh did nothing to correct their mistake or help us. I will be filing a complaint with the Vice Consul. We were able to get an appointment with the USCIS Office in Fairfax, Virginia for 12 December after sending a few messages through the online USCIS account. I had to borrow $3,200 at 23% interest to make the trip. Luckily we happened to find unusually cheap flights, but they were still $1,400 and 20 hours of travel each way. We took everything that we had originally provided to the Embassy: the I-130, I-130a, I-864EZ, the receipts for the fees we paid, original marriage cert, original birth certificate and copies and certified translations (the military has a free translation service through military onesource), criminal police certificates from Saudi Arabia and Ecuador, photos of our relationship, copies of what the clinic gave us from her medical exam, passports, IDs, military orders. The officer asked if we had the approved I-130 and we did not, so that worried us. He also said we did not need to give him the I-485. His supervisor was very friendly and said that they will put an add-in into her new passport (her immigrant visa/temporary I-551 was in her original passport which we had to renew because it was going to expire March 2025). The add-in is a USCIS stamp that they write her A# and receipt # into and they gave us an expiration of 11 Dec 2025. It doesn’t look very official so it will probably cause the same problems of every single airline worker questioning the authenticity and calling one or more higher supervisors. The USCIS supervisor was surprised to hear that even her official looking Visa/Temp I-551 gives her problems. He asked which airports we had issues at and we told him it has been every single time to include layovers: Frankfurt, Miami, London Heathrow, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dulles-Washington, JFK-New York City, Guayaquil. Departing we go early enough and plan ahead for the 30-60 minutes that it takes to argue with the ticket agents, but at layovers she has almost missed a few connections because they still don’t believe her temp I-551 is valid, even though the departure airport validated the documents in the system. Anyways. I was worried about being able to attend the appointment with my wife, but the guards at the x-ray machine didn’t seem to care that I wasn’t on the list. We were also worried when her name didn’t get called but then the agents told somebody else that they were running behind and they eventually called her name. I told the officer that we had some 319(b) questions and he had us wait and 10 minutes later the 319(b) team supervisor came and let us ask him questions which was very nice. We had sent a message via the USCIS inbox asking for our case to be transferred from San Antonio, TX to their office in Washington DC and we had received a response a couple days later that our case will be transferred to the National Benefits Center in Missouri. The 319(b) supervisor said that’s normal and that once we get a Request for Evidence for fingerprints and return those it can take about ten weeks for the background investigation. I also asked him what happens if the military moves me back to the States before her N-400 is finalized and he said that it will be denied and we will have to start over in the states using the timelines for military of needing three years of residency. For her that will be March 2027 so we are hoping it gets finalized before we move, though we don’t know when that is quite yet. We have the fingerprint cards done and we received the Request For Evidence on 13 Dec. We just got back to Riyadh so we mailed them today now that we have the address of where to mail the cards. Just to be safe we are going to drive the seven hours to the USCIS Office at Doha, Qatar on 29 December so the prints can be uploaded to the system and verified that they’re acceptable instead of waiting to hear that the cards were smudged and unreadable. Just now we received a notice that her visa packet recreation was accepted and her permanent green card is being produced, so that is great news. Just wish we had gotten it back in April/May. And that we had applied for the N-400 back in March when she received her LPR status. Posting all this for any other 319(b) or OCONUS military filers. Appreciate everyone’s help and will continue to update as the N-400 process develops for us.

Through her USCIS account we received Notice of Receipt of the N-400 application and part of that notice says that the notice itself automatically extends the I-551 24 months past its expiration date, so hopefully that also works for the temporary I-551 in the passport. Following your link to the state dept, they have a lot of helpful information that I haven’t seen before, including a statement that the N-400 can be submitted using the passport temporary I-551, and they recommend using the Washington DC office as they are used to processing expeditious N-400s and are next to a passport facility. I had selected the San Antonio USCIS facility because I think it is likely that we are stationed at Fort Cavazos, Texas next. Not sure if the selection can be changed now, but we will see. I will call the Riyadh Embassy RSO tomorrow for fingerprints, or we can possibly drive to Doha’s USCIS office and do the biometrics digitally and maybe be able to give them the documents for the visa packet at the same time.