Ryan & Rachaya

We submitted an I-130 in Aug 2022 but there were errors so we cancelled and refiled in Sep 2023 (both electronically). This second one was received and marked as "Being Actively Reviewed" almost immediately. The "Estimated time until case decision" initially said 6 weeks (!). This made us very happy as we thought maybe someone was being merciful given the year we'd just lost due to the previous filing error. But that counted down and nothing happened except the status changed to "Taking longer than expected". It remained that way for a few weeks and then the Estimated Time reset to 2 months (but still Being Acively Reviewed). That counted down and (now Jan 2024) the status again changed to "Taking longer than expected." It remained that way until just last week (April 2024) and now has reset to 7 months. We are no longer so happy. Has anyone seen this sort of behavior before, know what it could mean, or if we should try to do anything about it? On the one hand, even 7 months from now is still very shy of the "15 month" general estimate for I-130's at Texas, so by that count we should not contact USCIS until well into 2025. On the other hand, it really looks like something is wrong here and we don't want to wait until mid-2025 to find out what it is. Losing that first year was quite a blow and is not an experience we want to repeat. Any advice?

A few weeks ago, I submitted a request to withdraw the previous I-130 since there wasn't a way to correct my mistakes. I received the confirmation of that today, so that attempt is dead and buried and I'll try to stop kicking myself about it. We filed (and paid for) a new I-130, electronically again, on Sept 27th and by Oct 2nd it was already marked as active, with an estimated time until decision of 6 weeks. I was hoping for something in the mail to expand on this (we received the NoA1 quickly, as normal) but nothing has arrived - though the estimated time is ticking down (to 4 weeks now). My question is what could be going on here? Normally an I-130 would sit there for a year+ before being looked at right? Is there a chance that some angel at USCIS read my letters and bumped us up since this is a "replacement" application? Or is this more likely a sign that something is wrong? I suppose, in theory, that I will find out in 4 weeks - but I thought I would ask and maybe save another month of stress. Either way, good news or bad, it would certainly be better to get it in a month rather than in a year!

But the purpose of my post was the title (where to send the withdrawal letter) and now that's been lost. Shouldn't threads be by topic rather than by situation? You're just going to end up with each user having their own single long topic, which is an awful way to try and get questions answered as things move forward. Anyway, can we say the "there were mistakes on our I-130" situation is done now? I've certainly moved past that snag but I will probably have continuing questions on various matters as we move forward and they (like this one) are not about whether there are mistakes on our I-130. I would like to be able to have new discussions about these new topics rather than a single multi-page chronicle of our journey all in one topic with my new questions buried where no one is likely to consider them. Or is everything I post from now on going to get buried here?

Due to uncorrectable errors on our I-130, we are going to withdraw the flawed petition and resubmit. I have the withdrawal letter ready (with all pertinent info) but I am not certain where to send it. Our NoA1 was from the Potomac Service Center. Our NoA2 was from the Texas Service Center. The new I-130 will be sent to USCIS in Carol Stream, IL. I think that I recall reading that it should go to the last place that took action. That would be Texas. But that last action was an I-130 approval that shouldn't have happened (due to said errors). I could easily send copies to each place, but could that end up causing more problems? I'm also wondering if I should wait for a response on the withdrawal request before submitting the new I-130. I expect the new petition will just sit in a pile for a year+ before any action is taken on it, so it seems like giving the withdraw just a few days head start (rather than waiting the weeks/months it might take for confirmation of the withdrawal) should be fine? I'm not sure if it matters, but in our specific case, we are petitioning for a visa to bring my wife to the US. An error on the I-130 made USCIS think she is already in the US so they approved it and sent us an NoA2 with instructions to start the Adjustment of Status process. Obviously, we can't do that as she's not here yet. I called the help line and was told to mail in a letter explaining the situation and to ask what we should do next. I did that and the reply contained no answers (or evidence of a human having read the letter). Thus it seems our only option is to withdraw and resubmit. That resets our timeline to day 1 so I'd like to get things moving as soon as possible.

I've sent a letter (and corrected I-130) to the USCIS explaining the problem, asking if anything can be done, and requesting to withdraw the petition if not. I'm heading to the other side of the planet in the morning to spend most of September with my wife. My hope is that a reply will be waiting when I return and then we'll proceed from there. I figure it's 95% likely that we'll be starting over, but since I'll then have to explain my "previous petition", I feel better about exhausting all possibilities first. Also, it's what the person on the USCIS customer support line suggested I do. I wish that I had a better recollection of the process when I filed but it was more than a year ago. It's so odd that I would make those mistakes. The paper I-130 from which I was working was pretty much ok, so it was just input errors when I did the electronic version. I really don't recall at all other than that it took a few sessions to finish the process. I'm wondering if somehow I didn't save my progress from the last session, or sent it early, or something. It's my fault either way since they send that "snapshot" document after you file. The errors are in there but I didn't see them. I was just recovering from covid at the point so maybe my brain wasn't back up to speed. The snapshot is horribly formatted, and I'm sure I was completely burned out on gathering and entering data by that point, but still. I should have caught the mistakes way back then, but it is what it is. Maybe I can be a cautionary tale for others

Since the last time I did this in a hurry it cost me $500 and a year of my life, I'm trying the slow and careful route now. As always, thank you for the help. See you in a year

Thanks. That meshes with what I was thinking. I'll get a final inquiry and withdrawal letter off to USCIS shortly.

Below is an excerpt from our NoA2 telling us that our I-130 petition has been approved and we should submit an I-485 to adjust status. My question is "has our I-130 been sent to the NVC"? The reason is that there are errors in our electronic I-130 and these have made USCIS think we're at the "adjust status" phase when we are really at the CR-1 visa phase. I am trying to determine if I should contact USCIS, or the NVC, (or both?) to find out if there are any options aside from withdrawing and resubmitting the petition. My assumption is that USCIS is waiting for an I-485 and will just hold until then, but most of my assumptions in this process have proven incorrect, so I thought I'd ask.

So our electronically-filed I-130 has a bunch of errors (nothing that a human couldn't figure out, but still wrong stuff in (8) wrong boxes). I suspect I either hit the Send button early or didn't Save the final version of the form when I was filling it out a year ago. My fault regardless. The errors made the USCIS software think that my wife is in the US already and so they think we want to Adjust Status rather than get a CR-1 Visa. Our I-130 petition has been approved and the case closed according to USCIS (via our Case Status web page) so it's no longer possible to upload an explanation or correction there. I accept that corrections cannot be made in a friendly/informal manner (like someone at USCIS just fixes those 8 boxes and then proceeds as normal). I accept that I form I-824 cannot be used to correct the errors (as per Crazy Cat's post above). I believe that leaves withdrawing the petition and refining as the only option. What's another year right? I intend to send a letter (and correct I-130) to USCIS to explain the situation and, barring other options, request to withdraw the I-130 so we can refile. The USCIS phone rep said I should send the letter to the same place I sent the application. Only after I got off the phone did I realize this isn't valid since I electronically filed. Looking over the paper I-130 instructions, it looks like a physical application would have been sent to USCIS Attn: I-130 P.O. Box 4053 Carol Stream, IL 60197-4053 Is this where I should send this I-130 explanation/withdrawal letter? Maybe with a different "Attn" line? I asked because our NoA1 was from: Potomac Service Center U.S. CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGRATION SVC 2200 Potomac Center Dr MS 2425 Arlington VA 20598-2425 and the recent Approval Notice (NoA2?) was from: Texas Service Center U.S. CITIZENSHIP & IMMIGRATION SVC 6046 N Belt Line Rd., STE 110 Irving TX 75038-0012 Given that I've already cost us 12 months of unnecessary delay, I don't want to waste another month or more by sending the letter to the wrong place. I did also send a note to NVC via their "Public Inquiry Form" online. They replied that they haven't yet received our petition from USCIS. I'm thinking maybe USCIS isn't ever going to send them our petition since they think we want to adjust rather than get a visa. Does that sound right? If it would go to NVC either way, then I'll wait a little and recontact NVC (which is what their reply suggested). Thanks again for all of the help here.

I talked to a USCIS representative this morning and her advice was to send a letter in to explain the situation, so I'll do that. I'll include a corrected I-130 and ask that they let me know how to proceed (just swap in the correct form, submit an I-824, or withdraw and restart). I'll also upload the letter and form to my electronic documents stash online just as a potential heads-up to whoever looks at our stuff. My assumption at this point is that we'll be withdrawing and reapplying once I hear back.

That is my plan (call and try to speak with a human). I found more extensive errors so I need to confirm if this is a restart or an I-824 situation. I really don't know what could have been going on when I submitted this but I messed it up somehow. So I just want to do it right from here so I don't waste another year.

I think this is my last question on this matter, but I just want to check before I write a check: I am certain that the problem is "Bangkok" accidentally got filled in for 61.a (the "US city") on form I-130, so that made them think we want to adjust status now, rather than get a CR-1 visa to come to the US. It's probably a cut-n-paste error on my part from when I was transferring data from the "normal" I-130 PDF to the electronic application. The normal version is correct, so if we'd just mailed paper in this would not have happened 😕 Is there any way to get this corrected aside from the i-824? Is there anywhere to e-mail or call to clear out that one little box on the electronic form? I do really appreciate the info on the i-824, I'm just hoping to avoid it and the $465 fee. I also want to be sure that the i-824 is the right course of action so I don't mess things up even more. Since we just got the notice of approval saying they are looking at the case, I added a note and my correct I-130 PDF to our pile of documents online. Maybe, if they haven't looked over everything yet, they'll see it and make this trivial correction without a huge delay and expense? (Yeah, I know - not likely). Anyway, thanks again - everyone - for the assistance. Even though I feel awful and so stressed I could fall over, I am glad that I asked the question rather than assuming everything was fine. At least now I can start working on a fix.

No, I think it's more likely a transcription error when I was cut-n-pasting from the mail-in PDF form (which I triple checked) to the online electronic thing (which I only single checked as the formatting of the snapshot was not good, and I was likely fairly braindead after that process). That or pasting all of the Thai text in the question before messed up something (ie. the form or my brain). This was a year ago so I don't recall exactly what I did - I just the forms and paperwork I have from the. The PDF that I filled out is ok but the weirdly formatted "snapshot" of the electronic submission has the Thai city in the US city spot (as well as the foreign city spot) and none of the native-language stuff shows up. That's what makes me think the snapshot may not be fully accurate - even my addled brain would have noticed the entire "native address" section being blank. But then maybe the snapshot PDF just doesn't have the right font installed or something.

Yeah, that's the problem. In the copy they have, "Bangkok" also got filled in for 61.a (though 61.b (State) is still blank). I uploaded a note and corrected page 8 just in case the human that looks at it is in a good enough mood to help us out. Otherwise, yeah, back to the drawing board I guess. Thanks for the help all. I suppose if anyone has experience on how to best try and correct this sort of error, let me know. Otherwise, I'll just assume it's worst-case scenario (ie. start over) as everything else in this process seems to default to that.

I just pulled a "fresh" copy of the electronic I-130 we filed and it doesn't match the copy it gave us at the time of filing, so that may be the problem. I'll look at it some more and see if I can figure out where they went wrong (I really wish we had just used paper and pen).

61 blank, 62 Bangkok (Thailand). Is it possible that someone (or some piece of software) saw that, legally, our marriage took place in Utah and therefore we got sorted to the "she's already in the US" pile? Or could a previous Adjustment of Status attempt (different wife, years ago, canceled before Adjustment) have somehow gotten pulled from my file and mistakenly tied to this CR-1 filing?

I'm going over the steps in the Guide again and that's what we did, so I don't know what could have happened. So, as a start, how on an I-130 would I have "indicated your spouse would be adjusting status"? What box would I have checked or question would I have answered to indicate this rather than a 'plain old' CR-1 process?

We followed the steps and filed electronically, the I-130, 130A and such. I'm looking over the I-130 and I haven't been able to find any problem. It lists the Beneficiary's Physical Address as Thailand. Also the box after "Was the beneficiary EVER in the United States" is checked "No". I wonder if us getting married online in the US caused some confusion? Or maybe there was another checkbox of some sort in the electronic filing process that I misclicked (but doesn't show on the printed form)? Anyway, it looks like I need to contact someone somewhere eh? Any advice on who, and how I can explain the problem?

Thailand.

I think everything is probably ok but I want to check. We filed our I-130 in Aug 2022 and just received the approval notice (which I think is also known as NoA 2, is that right?). There seems to be some contradictory information. Our Case Status Page says "nothing is outstanding at this time" and they'll let us know if they need anything. but The Approval Notice PDF doc says "submit a copy of this notice, along with a Form I-485". Do they mean that we should do that right now, or is this just sort of a heads-up as to what we'll need to do down the road (and so we should do nothing right now)? Also, the visajourney Step-by-Step guide says that the NoA would "indicate... the forwarding of your approved petition to the NVC" but I don't see where our approval notice says anything about that. It acts like the NVS has it, but doesn't say anything about it being forwarded to them - but maybe I'm just not understanding the process. Is the simple fact that we got this document the "indication" that the Guide is talking about? I've attached screenshots of the bits below. Is there something weird going on, or is this the usual procedure (and so we should just wait for further contact)? If we do just wait, is the next thing expected the "welcome letter" people mention and then the interview preparation packet with its associated To Do list? Thank you.

Just as a data point, our NOA 1 was dated 18 AUG 2022 from the Potomac Center. Our receipt number is IOE938....... Our VJ timeline is estimating the next notice between July and September, 2023. uscis.gov processing time says 16 months for 80% of cases complete, which would work out to November-ish. Obviously the former would be nice, but we're assuming the latter is far more likely (and even then hoping we're not in the slow 20%). We were assuming 18 months when we filed so even 16 months is an improvement (though moving from Thailand to Pittsburgh in winter may not be the nicest transition). Anyway, we're hanging in there. Stay strong - and good luck everyone.

Thank you!

Sorry to be a bother, but I'm just filling out the power of attorney (2848) form now. I can probably take a reasonable guess at what goes on the "Description of Matter" lines, but if you've already summitted one of these without issues, could you let me know what you put on these lines in order to be able to sign the W-7 and then the (married filing jointly) 1040? Going in, I had assumed there would be an "sign all tax related docs" option, but now I see you need to list every one that might come up. The actual 1040 return and the W-7 for the ITIN are the only ones I can think of at the moment... And it looks like 3 years is the maximum duration (which is fine). Thanks again!

Wow, thank you for sharing! That may make my life a lot easier (though I really should have started on this earlier :). edit: Obviously I'm going to need to file for an extension. I guess that I still send the tax documents to the W-7 location even though the W-7 is the reason I need the extension (and so a completed W-7 will not be in that initial filing)? I suppose I'll include a W-7 filled in as much as possible and a note about the missing stuff (the certified docs, wife's signature, etc.).

200+ views but no advice? I wish I could help but (apparently like everyone else) I came here looking for answers too as I'm also working on filing jointly with a non-resident alien (with no individual taxpayer identification number yet). And, after reading your post, now I ALSO want to know how one goes about getting power of attorney to sign docs like this. Because, otherwise, I need to send a bunch of stuff to the other side of the planet and back just for the signature - which is possible, but quite a hassle.