Obllak[BANNED]

You guys make me so happy! 🥰 Yesterday was freaking amazing, whoop whoop!

Pulling it now! Until 29th of March reports are going to be later in the day, due to traveling. From that point on, we are going back to daily reports around 11 a.m. CET

I have seen some mixed explanations about "DENIED" and "REJECTED" cases. Here is what I have figured out from processing the data: Rejections and denials are two different terminal statuses. REJECTIONS happen almost "immediately" when USCIS receive the form and they do the fast check-up (if the form is correct, if the fee is correct, if it was properly filed, if the form was signed...). DENIALS on the other hand can happen anytime when they start touching the case - there is no rule and no pattern; so whenever they bump into something reasonable enough (and not form-related) to deny it, they will do it. What we see in the most recent months are mostly just rejections, while cases around and before "hot zone" are already both - rejections and denials. I personally didn't want to make two separate columns for each, because I thought it will make people more confused (if they are not familiar with different terminal statuses, so we put them in one column category), but I will include the explanation in the Read Me!

Whoops, I made a typo too! I meant 2022 as well! You are very welcome.

They are not yet working on February 2021 cases. They are currently working on January 2021. You can follow their progress here (under "Total Cases" sheet -> "hot zone" (red line) in the table)

Yes, we put them yesterday in withdrawn

Good idea, I will add the info into Read Me and explain under which processed category those statuses fall. Thank you for your thoughts! We will think about it and include it in tomorrow's update.

We definitely want to work on giving more fine grain data. Eventually we would like to roll out personalized estimates, which we are currently focusing on. But I will have this 50%/80% in my mind and probably soon add some columns!

Those cases account for 81 of the cases in the backlog. We were talking about this one when we were building a database and you just reminded us that we didn't finalize it and decided if we should put them under approved or rejected (since they are not either of those). We definitely have to do this until tomorrow's update, so thank you for that! Any suggestions where we should put them? We were thinking rejected, since they are not really approved, but we are open for suggestions!

Yes, that's exactly what @Bh_sarah said! We compute the estimated wait time based on the backlog of unprocessed cases & the USCIS processing speed. Estimates before the "hot zone" are somewhat meaningless, because these cases are mostly stuck in RFE/RFER or filers had terrible luck and their case didn't get processed along other cases in the month. "Ghost cases" (passive months) are moving very slowly and therefore numbers before the "hot zone" doesn't change much. We are still thinking if we should remove these estimates before the hot zone. What matters in Estimate Wait Time is from the hot zone onwards. Also, keep in mind that numbers in the table are for the END of the month (so if someone is checking for the beginning of the month, they should check the number in the previous month).

Hi! They are not actively working on the March 2022 yet (~1% of processing activity daily - approvals/denials+rejections/withdrawals). All the activity there is from the initial checkup they do when they receive cases (rejections) and some denials on which they do when they start to touch cases. Approvals are from expeditions or random fast approvals. They are not processing anything actively after January. As you can see all months after January has similar % of processed cases (except last few months in 2023), which happen in stage until they start to actively work on the month. No reason to be upset about it, there are just high amount of cases in March and therefore more processed cases (but % similar).

They are still working on cases for November and previous months. The "active" tails stretches from August 2021 to January 2022, but since they process so little amount of cases compared to December and January cases, November is not in the "hot zone" anymore, therefore not colored red. If you look at the bottom right from the table in "Total Cases", you can see % of cases processed the previous day. Everything before August is marked as "ghost cases", since there is barely any activity.

I haven't pulled all February cases and added them into the Total cases (incomplete 2023 data's cells are grey colored). I also haven't start on March at all. I started pulling February 2023 yesterday. It's a long pull unfortunately and I had to fix some bugs on the way... But In the next few days data for the full February will be ready

Are you a petitioner living in US? If the answer to this question is yes, and you went to court, then there is a record with FBI. Failure to include information is a really bad idea. Have you checked with the Clerk of the court in which you were tried for any records? My petitioner's court case was also dismissed (pre-trial) and later expunged, but we were still able to get records of the case from the Clerk. Did you also reach out to the police department that arrested you? If both of those turn up empty, you should still write this in your application. Some people on here get their own FBI records pulled and include those in the application, which is definitely the safest bet.

Status should say transferred, except if they did transferred it without doing any changes on the status. I haven't came across of this situation yet. I am curious if someone ever had any changes on the status (got e-mail or letter), but their USCIS status wasn't changed according to those changes.

I thought so too, but these cases are held for more than 500 days already since the status was changed. At this point I am leaning more towards them just not doing anything with them and leave them as they are.

You are right, it is cumulative

"Pending cases" are cases that has been touched, but didn't yet reach the terminal decision. For example, expedition received/denied, transferred, document mailed, case reopened etc.

yes, definitely decreases the time!

Yes, good point! But since there is a time limit to reply to RFE, I don't understand why they don't automatically change these cases to "denied" after that time passes.

First we were thinking to remove "ghost cases", but at the same time we don't want to alter USCIS data we are presenting, so we decided to work on a specific personalized graph that will take this into the consideration. We are tracking this trend now for few days and will continue to do for at least a month, to be more confident on a number before we publish it. But yes, there are "plenty" of statuses whose status were changed more than 15 months ago (for instance: a person that filed in January 2021 received RFE in August 2021 and from that point on the case status was not changed). To me it seems like USCIS never received RFER, but I am wondering at the same time why USCIS didn't come back to these cases and change their status to "denied". So far, for us it is a mystery what exactly is happening with those (so far we haven't seen any activity, so we do consider them "ghost cases").

It's my pleasure! I'm glad so many people like it and find it useful!

Hi folks! I'm the one running I-129F spreadsheet. Feel free to ask questions! I will also add these questions + answers to FAQ in Read Me sheet, so it will clarify to more people and I will try to make the spreadsheet more clear.

If they keep up this pace in late December/early January. If they speed up even more - for 15% (which I am not surprised if if happens), I would say that AVG estimation is in beginning of December. If they speed up for 30%, AVG estimation will be in the beginning of November. Since we are currently experiencing the spike of processed cases, we still don't know what is their carrying capacity ( = limit). I hope they at least keep up this speed, or of course, better, if they increase num of cases processed.

Can I ask where exactly you find this data?? I am trying to find something like that without any luck