lennikov

It's extremely random for hardship cases. Some cases were adjudicated 6 months after filing, and some were filed in 2020 and are still pending. No clear pattern allows us to establish which cases DOS is currently working on, i.e., submitted in May 2022, and DOS does not share how they choose the case and how they process it. All we can tell is that the rough average waiting time is ~20 months, but it can be 30 months or 10 months in your particular case. We don't know how many cases in total, how many people processing it, what is the processing time for the average case, nothing. Only the time from submission to approval/denial. There was an attempt to collect many cases to apply statistical methods to determine more about how DOS handles individual cases. Still, it faced significant negativity and shut down shortly after rolling out.

It is quite effective but will cost you about $5,000 to file. It only forces DOS to make a decision, not necessarily a favorable one.

I think that is what might take to make DOS change their practice of swiping hardship cases under the rug.

The only problem with looking at other people's timelines and comparing them to yours is it doesn't tell much about how long your case will take. It appears that cases submitted in late September/early October 2022 will be reviewed/decided soon, but this is not necessarily true. The case may take a year and three years or more, with very little indication of how your case will take since DOS does not disclose anything about its process. You may think your case is next, only to find yourself in 2025 still waiting. To get some answers, many cases should be subjected to statistical analysis; then, we can see some tendencies. There was an attempt to do so, but it faced a lot of negativity, and honestly, with the federal government, you never know what they will choose to call a crime so maybe it is not a best topic to investigate.

Theoretically, you can file a Supreme Court case for the unconstitutional hardships waiver waiting times violating your constitutional rights. But it requires very substantial financial investments, maybe a decade of legal effort, and would only help those who face this challenge after you. Most of us regular people eventually go through this and even get our green cards and prefer never to forget this difficult time. On top of that, you will need evidence that your constitutional rights were violated, and DOS can always counterclaim that they are understaffed and under-budgeted, likely resulting in the case dismissal without a hearing. With DOS being quite a black box, it's hard to build an argument. There was a person who tried to collect the hardships cases and run some analysis on them; remember what happened to him? Furthermore, the strongest argument against any J-1 hardship seeker can be "Nobody forced you to take the J-1". It's not like they do not tell you that there is a 2YHR. It's just they are not clear enough about how big of a trouble it can be. Many people have no idea about J-1 2YHR until they encounter it. This is actually the biggest fallacy of the J-1: if you can get hired as a J-1, you most likely can file for the NIW green card. In summary, as an individual, you probably can't do much to change this situation as it has remained unchanged for the past 30 years. Wait it out if you can, or file mandamus if you can afford it. If you win a couple of million in the lottery and would be willing to spend it on a legal battle with DOS in the supreme court, let me know.

It is more complicated than simple punishment; DOS is not an entity to punish someone, just a raging bureaucracy involving both USICS and DOS branches. I doubt any individual DOS and USCIS staff member is interested in causing suffering to families and US citizens. Yet, the lack of explanation of ~24-48 months waiting time for a decision on the case makes it sound like a penalty to the individuals who claim hardships waiver. I think it's just system runs itself into the condition that the only way a J-1 hardship waiver can work is if the applicant can obtain an O-1 visa to have the ability to wait for the decision otherwise, depending on how early the applicant files for the hardship wavier he most likely fulfill the 2YHR before the waiver decision is made making the whole category completely useless for the average person filing for it. The reasonable thing to do would be to make strict requirements for the waiver, i.e., supported by medical documents, as it is frequently health-related, but make the decision time the same as other categories. I think one of the problems is that hardship is a very vague term that in DOS's mind, requires a lot of time to investigate and look at from every perspective before reaching a conclusion, so paradoxically the very long decision time most likely done by the DOS in the interest of the applicant, but as usual, they fail to account that such a long waiting time cause even more hardships.

It feels like that because it is the punishment for people who want to break their promise to return to their home country, so DOS ensures that this category waiver will take 24 months or more. In many cases, people run out of legal presence unless they can get an O-1 you will run out of legal presence on J-1 eventually before the decision by DOS is made to return to their home country, fulfill their 2 years home residency, return to the US and get their green card, completely forgetting about the Hardships case only to get a letter with Favorable (and completely useless by that point) decision from DOS some 3-4 years down the line.

It's true; I got a few month's extension on my J-1, which helped me finish the O-1 application. I had about 3 months before the 5-year cap. But even with this consideration, you need to obtain strong grounds for the waiver and start an application within the first 24 months of your J-1. It is much easier for the countries that provide no-objection waivers, but you must avoid governmental funding. I still have not figured out if paying postdoc salary from the R01\R21 grants is considered governmental funding, as they are not awarded to the fellow but to the PI, and it is a PI's choice who to hire for that money.

More like 18 as Form i-612/612 was received only on December 29, 2021, so effectively, it took all of 2022 + 8 months of 2023 with the decision in August. Yes, waiver takes about the same time as 2YHR itself, in some cases longer than 24 months. Unless you can get an O-1, it is impossible to play the waiver game as after you have submitted the waiver, you normally can't renew your J-1, and it takes 12 months of USCIS + 24 months of DOS + another 2-3 months after the positive decision is returned to USCIS. Totalling over 3 years the J-1 is typically issued for 1-2 years, always exceeding the lengths of legal presence J-1 can afford.

It doesn't seems to have clear pattern exempt 12-18 months decision time on average overall. I was looking for a while at cases filed at different times. Some cases that were filed at the same day as mine have already been approved and some cases filed over the year earlier is still pending. If there is a system or order in how these cases are reviewed and decided I'm not sure if I see it. I did notice however that there is a tendency for rejected cases to have particularly long waiting time with over 20-24+ months in some cases, so if your case taking particularly long to decide it might be a bad sign that it will receive not favorable recommendation. However it is hard to say as with limited cases the pattern is hard to establish.

You have only one opportunity to update the DOS on your situation is when you submit Form DS-3035 after that the decision would be made on the circumstances that were at the point through Personal statement update. There is no meaningful way to update DOS on your case, you can send them an update letter but it most likely would not be filed to your case or considered. I know it's insane that decision was made based on circumstances that in some cases several years old, but it is the situation. I advise you against filing a new Hardships case first of all it will restart the waiting time adding another few years. Second if your case went through USCIS then there is finding of hardships and there is a possibility of DOS approving the case. Withdrawing the case (I'm not even sure if it can be withdrawn) and starting the process again would complicate things unnecessarily.

I have a feeling the long DOS review time is sort of penalty for those who file for a waiver with the message as follows "You took an obligation to spend 2 years in your home country, nobody forced you to take it, but you took it anyway, now you are trying to break this obligation by whatever reason, while your reason might be valid one we make sure that you wait the same two years or even longer while waiting for us to make a decision on your case". There are absolutely no reason for exceptional hardship cases to have such insane waiting times. On top of that if you wait long enough the applicant circumstances may change to the point that they would ether no longer have the exceptional hardships or they would no longer pursue the life and career in the US. The whole J-1 is unconstitutional and should be replaced with something more sensible and humane. Yes in most cases there is no problem with the 2 years home residency but what if the home country of applicant is in war, or no longer exist or applicant no longer have the right to live in that country by whatever reason yet J-1 is super inflexible on that regard. The very least they should remove physical presence in the home country it is reasonable to request to leave the US, but not rigidly stipulate for a person to live in his home country.

If you are referring to "Other" it is usually an updated personal statement where you provide an update how your situation changed from the moment you have submitted the documents to USCIS which is usually 6-12 months to the moment documents goes to DOS it is optional and would not affect your process.

If you frequently check the status of your case on https://j1visawaiverstatus.state.gov/ here's some advice. You may have noticed that the first attempt to enter the captcha always fails. This is because the first captcha image is wrong and completely mismatch the intended captcha values (see example image). However, there is a solution: use the listening function to learn the correct captcha, which is correct every time. Alternatively, you can regenerate the first captcha if you don't want to use earphones, and all subsequent captchas will be correct. It's unclear whether this is an oversight or an intentional feature designed to make bot training more difficult.