daru

People, including like adjudicators on Reddit and elsewhere, have been saying that the estimate is completely unreliable and meaningless (but they're lawyers, not engineers nor mathematicians, so they don't know how it's calculated or how much relevant data is being used to compute it). However, it obviously was based on /something/. The formula seems to have changed a few weeks ago so I'm hopeful that it's now more reliable. Maybe the estimate was based on all N-400 rules rather than specifically the one we selected, and/or was nationwide rather than specific to our field office. Also, maybe the estimate was based on the average processing speed of the last 12 or 24 months. The longer the period the smoother and stabler it is. If it's based on the last few weeks for instance, then the estimate is gonna very greatly within weeks if the amount of resources focused on processing this form varies. I've read on the overall Processing Times public page that 80% of the cases ending up at my field office were completed within like 6.5mo iirc. I filed in mid-September, and it's now telling me the case decision will be in 3mo. That sounds fairly accurate to me. A week or so ago, before the formula change, it was telling me something like 25 days. I imagine that it was either a median (50% of cases filed on my filing date rather than 80%), and/or based on the 5y rule, and/or based on everybody...

Also, the answer is always no if you requested a name change as only federal judges can adjudicate name changes.

If you check tomorrow you might find out that you had your oath ceremony yesterday 🙃

I don't have an update but I have new information. Someone in an immigration-related FB group asked a question yesterday and shared about their situation. They filed jointly in early 2023, then sent a request to amend their case to the B/EC waiver in January 2024. In June 2024, they received the following notice (they provided a screen capture, I'm typing "(...)" on all the parts that they scrambled): So it seems it's protocol for them to play dead while doing something resembling a prima facie on ROC cases before they convert them (although I'm not sure they mean to play dead for this long; but they do adjudicate the amendment request separately from the amended case and only get back to the applicant after that).

An annulment does not prevent you from removing conditions but it would likely be based on a claim that you married under false pretenses and you don't want a court document to state such a thing. An annulment may prompt for you to provide more justifications to USCIS. Also, an annulment will give your spouse a clean slate to do it all over again with his next victim as your marriage will have never happened in the first place so he will get to deny everything for the rest of his life, and you will be deprived of closure.

Also, annulments can happen with default judgements if he files for annulment and you don't fight it (which may require you to litigate, which in turn may require you to have a family lawyer on retainer; these are very expensive). Most respectable lawyers will drag their feet at the idea of filing a frivolous annulment suit, but one can always find someone who will play along.

Divorce waiver is more straightforward because you don't have much else to prove than the same things you already proved in 2021. However it does require a final judgement of divorce. You can still ask to add the divorce waiver without providing the divorce decree, then they're gonna issue an RFE (when they look at the filing, which might take a while longer), then either you have it and provide it or you don't can't provide it on time and they will deny the filing. However, you will still be able to refile I-751 later on with the divorce decree, as long as you haven't received an NTA (Notice to Appear, basically a summons to immigration courts for deportation). In immigration court, you will have the right to fight deportation using any ground that you already claimed through I-751 waiver requests, so at such time if you did previously request for USCIS to add a divorce waiver to your then-current I-751, then in immigration court you will be able to provide the divorce decree (alongside your proof of bona fides marriage) and get your conditions removed. Same as with abuse waiver, if you do request it, even if it's not approved, you'll be allowed to evidence battery or extreme cruelty during deportation proceedings to get your conditions removed. The point of the abuse waiver is mostly to protect you against rogue actions of your spouse or ex-spouse. The original purpose of the immigration provisions of VAWA, as marketed to both political sides, is to enable victims of abuse to have one fewer hindrance to cooperation with law enforcement against perpetrators of domestic abuse. Fewer USCIS officers are trained to review abuse-based filings and it seems I-751 waivers are fairly rare so nobody really seems to know how long they take or how they move around. You can request an abuse waiver if (a) you qualify, (b) you can prove it, (c) this waiver is more interesting to you than the divorce one. Note that you can request both, but the abuse one is always reviewed first because of its ramifications, so although it's still useful to ask for more than one waiver so you have more than one ground you can use in immigration courts, you shouldn't both request waivers for grounds that you're not confident you'll eventually be able to prove. If you request the abuse waiver, you will benefit from privacy and confidentiality provisions, and you will retain eligibility for 3-year naturalization. Whatever waiver(s) you request, as long as there is at least one, then your spouse can't just withdraw their signature and have the case fall apart because the filing will have become individual. In addition to that, if you request an abuse waiver, USCIS will be barred from making any adverse determination based solely on information given either anonymously or by your abuser or any person who might be acting on their behalf If you get arrested while you have a pending or approved VAWA case, you won't be automatically referred to ICE USCIS will waive the requirement that you still be married and living with your abuser when reviewing an N-400 filing under the 3-year rule if you have a pending/approved B/EC I-751. In order to qualify and in addition to the bona fides, you need to document, under the "Any credible evidence" evidentiary standard, at least one of the following: One occurrence of battery toward you. Battery is physical violence. That includes many misdemeanors of domestic violence such as stalking (e.g. chasing you in traffic seemingly to assault you), menacing (e.g. making credible death threats, waving a deadly weapon to intimidate you), assault (e.g. hitting, punching, kicking, shoving, pulling hair, spitting on you, cutting/bruising/burning you, injuring you in any way), sexual assault, criminal mischief (damaging/destroying stuff around you is using physical violence in a way that creates an imminent risk of physical harm to you, and that's how battery is defined), etc. One occurence of extreme cruelty toward you. Items under this category are sometimes one-time events, or acts unfolding over time. A few items for which one occurence is sufficient include crimes such as coercion/extortion; withholding medical assistance while you have a medical emergency; maliciously having you committed in a psych ward; inflicting serious injuries or death to your pets or your children. Some stuff like financial abuse, making you pay for everything, forcing you to work, forcing you to not work, taking away your paycheck, being frugal within the relationship while dissipating funds outside of it, these things count as extreme cruelty but are not really one-time things so you need to show a pattern of these. Psychological abuse toward you that meets two criteria: You can prove that it follows a pattern over time (so it can't be a one-time thing, you need to prove repetition over a good while); I suggest you google "cycle of abuse" to see what the pattern looks like. USCIS tends to consider that this is a clinical finding which means that (a) they prefer if a professional third party (physician, social worker, police, etc) makes that finding and (b) even the honeymoon part is part of the pattern. There is case law on an AOS VAWA (I-360) case where a woman married with a US citizen had to prove that she experienced battery or extreme cruelty while married and on US soil and she underwent physical abuse in Mexico, fled to the US, her abuser contacted her and lovebombed her and she went back to Mexico where she was abused again. She won her case in appeal because the lovebombing is part of the clinical pattern of the cycle of abuse. If you're married with an alcoholic you know exactly what I'm talking about. Actually you said it yourself. Their being nice in-between drinks is how they keep us captive. This item is the best to accomodate abuse that presents in a mellow way (without one of those clear-cut occurrences of battery or extreme cruelty which I mention above) but it's also hazardous to demonstrate. You can secure a psych evaluation by a licensed mental health practitioner (can be a psychiatrist, a social worker, a psychologist, etc) that determines: you have a mental injury (meaning, a formal diagnosis such as PTSD, depression, anxiety, panic, phobia, personality disorder, etc), AND this diagnosis appears to be a direct consequence of the abuse Note that USCIS seems to heavily rely on state family case law, so if something qualifies as abuse for divorce purposes, and if you can prove it, it is likely that you have a decent case for USCIS. I suggest you look PDF publications of the NIWAP (National Immigrant Women Advocacy Project), they've been extremely helpful to me in getting a better understanding of what may or may not count. Qualifying criminal activity for the purpose of other stuff such as the U visa (hostage, slavery, torture, blackmail, etc) does usually qualify as either battery or extreme cruelty afaik. Finally, as far as proof goes, just like with bona fides there is the soft evidence (photos, audios if you're in a one-party consent state, etc), the hard evidence (acknowledgement by third parties of there having been abuse: police reports, criminal cases, orders of protection, medical reports describing injuries, abuse-based divorce decree, psych evaluation etc), and the statement and cover letter. Most appeals I could find online on VAWA cases featured a denial for two most recurring reasons: Spouse was mean, we're sorry you're traumatized, but these acts don't amount to our definitions of battery/extreme cruelty Lack of probative details (location, date, time, what discussion led to the incident, what was the social dynamic in the preceding days or weeks that led to this situation, what factors such as addiction or mental illness make that claim to this abusive behavior be more likely to be truthful). So the problem in your case is how you go about proving that your injuries are not self-inflicted for immigration purposes in the absence of police reports. If you have a lot of pieces of evidence of a variety of types (photos, med/psych docs, audio transcripts, testimonies from credible witnesses, etc) on several occurrences, it becomes much more likely truthful to an immigration officer that at least one of the claims is true, and with enough details of probative value, they can turn around their chair and argue to their direct supervisor that this case qualify because there's this event with these details that are clear enough to check the box. If all your evidence is first-party, you will have a serious burden of credibility to overcome. Some people are approved with just their statement and with little to no corroborating evidence, and USCIS insists on not providing much of a list of qualifying events or qualifying evidence because they want to encourage everybody who underwent domestic abuse to show it to them. it's not a lost cause. The standard is "any credible evidence". However, you do need to be mindful of the fact that the more third-party evidence you have, from professionals who are qualified to leave a paper trail that says "this person did experience domestic abuse" that USCIS officers can readily show to their boss during their daily/weekly/monthly performance reviews, the easier your case gets. DO NOT use anything audio or video if it was recorded in a State that requires the consent of all parties involved, or you will likely get referred by USCIS for a felony charge. If you do live in a one-party consent State, please note that USCIS doesn't do multimedia, so you will likely have to either transform your video into some kind of picture album and/or just use the audio track and put it in some transcription software (I used www.notta.ai, it's a Japanese platform for audio transcription, and yes they do English) to just provide a PDF transcript. My advice: Check with organizations that provide services to victims of domestic violence what your rights are. Even if you don't get for them to represent you, if at least you can get for them to look at your evidence and statement you will get a better sense of how solid your case is whether it be for housing, for immigration, etc. Collect as much evidence as you can before you move out. Take pictures, scan all documents that you have the right to scan. And also, consider not moving out. If you press charges and get an order of protection, and as long as you can keep paying the rent, you will be able to keep living in the house and your abuser will be the one moving out. I don't know where you live but in NYC, many precincts have a DV officer and you can show up and request to speak with a DV officer and they will provide you some guidance on what your options are and on whether you have enough evidence for your abuser to be arrested and charged. Start going to Al-Anon meetings, preferably in-person if you can (but don't attend online meetings while your abuser is nearby). Go several times per week if you can. It's not a "once-per-month" thing. And keep attending even after you separate. Go to at least maybe 10 meetings within a month or so. I promise you, things do get better.

Still no update, but I ended up just uploading all of my evidence onto the joint case on myUSCIS last week. I'm very uncomfortable with that but at least I know that they have all of it. I also called the Customer Contact Center and the best response I was able to get was that my evidence would be looked at during adjudication to assert at such time whether it's appropriate to apply VAWA-related procedures. The purpose of my call was to assert that now that I uploaded the evidence including a cover letter that requests the addition of that waiver, rather than God knows when. Seeing as I did apply for naturalization, I'm hopeful that my I-751 will be bumped up anyway and that I won't wait long. However, no news from the amendment request packet that I physically sent in early/mid September. I'm contemplating reaching out to the USCIS mediator or to my Congressperson because I'm still not sure that it's in my best interest to simply sit and wait.

Absolutely. There's a reason that I-751s exist. You can't naturalize before they have given a second look at the bona fides of your marriage.

I don't think the annulment would stick on the merits (also because I'm fighting it; I'm extremely confident that he was heavily relying on a default judgement because he's done it before in unrelated civil cases) but the case would convert to divorce eventually and I don't want to litigate the divorce in Texas. Even for the matter of lack of jurisdiction, my TX wants me to provide him with certified copies of the OOPs and I'm having a hard time getting these because apparently the criminal court clerk's office and the DA's office are not very familiar with the procedure. The opposing lawyer in TX could keep them out of evidence if they're not certified, and hinder me from making the point that there is abuse to litigate. My TX lawyer says the TX court is much more likely to waive their presumed subject matter jurisdiction if the OOPs are included. If they don't waive it, they will still be lacking personal jurisdiction and will be able to adjudicate the divorce but not the split, so I will be litigating in TX and it will take a while and I'll have to get everything certified and go back and forth etc, for the split to then not be done while that's what I care for the most. The I-751 situation is not just about frivolous accusations of fraud. He could also make frivolous accusations of crimes and disrupt the processing of my case. I have at least two examples in mind where he assaulted me and because I made it obvious that I was audio recording he started punching himself and took pictures of his own self-inflicted bruises. I provided USCIS with one (transcript of) recording where I call 911 and he talks over me to say I assaulted him and then when the dispatcher asks if there are weapons at home he says we have a bunch of firearms and are ready for a shootout. I also provided them with one (transcript of) recording where he records himself starting with something like "So you were saying you married me for immigration, right?" hoping that the gaslighting would have me confused enough to make an incriminating statement. I called his BS, he threatened to kill me if I call 911 again (he was trashing the apt a few minutes before and I had the doorman call 911 through the intercom), then assaulted me, then punched himself when he realized I was recording too, pretended to call a physician to report an assault, then when I confronted him about the criminal mischief he admitted to felony insurance fraud in an attempt to subdue me by trying to persuade me that I was an accessory to that crime (he lied to me so I would make an erroneous statement that led to the approval of his claim). On the recording he acknowledges that he fed me a lie, disregard that my knowledge and intent matter, and tries to scare me around the idea that I wouldn't fare as well as him in prison. So yeah he perfectly could just send pictures of self-inflicted bruises or cherry-pick statements that he induced, to see what sticks. With VAWA, all accusations of crimes will be ignored unless they can be corroborated by a non-presumably-malicious source. Without VAWA, such accusations could be sufficient to complicate and greatly delay at least my N-400 case and possibly also my I-751 case. Also, VAWA filings still require to prove the bona fides relationship (although it lowers the evidentiary standard, so the bona fides criterion is easier to meet). These filings don't drop the bona fides requirement, they simply prevent the abuser from having any say with USCIS.

The joint I-751 was done with the immigration lawyer who also filed I-130 / I-485 etc two years prior. I looked for a lawyer for the abuse amendment but wasn't able to find one. Most private lawyer I was able to get a ballpark from were above $8k for the filing, none of them were willing to take a case where there would be a concurrent N-400 filing, and all pro-bono organizations I spoke with refused to take my case because I still have CPR status (they usually do VAWA through I-360 rather than I-751) and because my revenue is above poverty level. So I did a lot of research and spent 8 months in 2024 gathering and compiling evidence and writing my statement and cover letter. I think the resource that helped me the most is the PDFs from the NIWAP (National Immigrant Women's Advocacy Project), which has several publications decrypting what kind of actions qualify one for VAWA. Most notably, they state that USCIS draws those in large part from family/divorce case law, hence the case law logic that makes something being abuse for divorce purposes also does it for immigration purposes. For instance, criminal mischief amounts to battery for divorce/immigration because it constitutes an imminent risk of physical harm, as does an assault or attempt thereof. I did not request a divorce waiver because I am very confident that my case will be approved on abuse grounds and because I am also very confident that it will be picked up long before I get a judgement of divorce. I could still refile based on divorce if the abuse waiver is denied which is very unlikely, and provide the judgement while the I-751 is pending, seeing as in such case it won't be bumped up by an N-400 concurrent filing. I am not only seeking for the existence of a VAWA filing to be acknowledged at final decision time, I am also seeking the protections granted by having a VAWA case. I believe that he is likely to make false declarations to USCIS in order to jeopardize my immigration status if I do certain things such as pressing charges for more of the things he's done, or reporting him to the licensing body for social workers in the State he now lives in and where he is attempting to get an annulment so that I struggle to defend myself from afar and to prove abuse with out-of-state evidence. On my expectations from divorce, I know that I won't get as much money as I would care for as long as I compel him to pay $10-20k out of the $50k+ he can reasonably be deemed to owe me, I'll be fine. The non-monetary stuff (pets, OOP, etc) is much more important to me and I won't get those things without litigating for them. He has much more of an incentive for divorce to be adjudicated first than I do. He wants to move on with his new victim and has also shown time and again that he will very actively and overtly evade every attempt to reach him or to collect debt, as he has always done. I want to collect as much as possible BEFORE the divorce be final, and I want to drag the divorce as much as possible in order to do so. Also, I have one family lawyer in NY who filed my divorce (and said "you could bury him" when I shared my I-751 VAWA statement and evidence and mentioned some of the stuff that I didn't include in evidence for his sake) and will litigate it on the merits, and another one in TX who is fighting the frivolous TX annulment filing based on lack of jurisdiction.

(I posted twice by accident above, if an admin could delete the first of my previous two comments, thx) To get back to the topic of this thread, I went through a call and a chat with a live agent through Emma and I tried to fill an inquiry but didn't go through because none of the options of that last one seemed to fit. For context/reminder, I mailed in a 428-page request to add a battery/extreme cruelty waiver to my joint I-751 filing. That request was received via FedEx on 9/11/2024 (so it's been a month and a half). The original joint filing was received in early Aug 2023. On the phone it was recommended for me to mail an inquiry to the service center and that I would get a response to it within a month. I haven't done that yet. On this past Saturday I received an automated e-mail from USCIS saying that they received my non-delivery inquiry and that their target response time to those is 72 hours. I don't know from which source they picked up an inquiry so I don't know how much of my problem they're already aware of. Also, it's all in the California Service Center, which I recently found out had moved to a new facility. I filed my amendment request at the old address during the overlap time so my request is acceptable as far as timing is concerned but I'm thinking it could have been lost in the move, or they might simply be struggling with a huge backlog in scanning. The lady on the phone did tell me that right now the ingesting time tends to be 30-60 days which seems huge to me.

I can't negotiate an IRS debt that I paid off. If I pay it off now I'll just be shifting the debt to my credit cards which would be a terrible judgement call. That means I shouldn't just pay the tax debt off, but at the same time, I filed for naturalization so I need to be careful to not be found to lack GMC in not outright paying the tax debt off. Also an agreement is not feasible when the other party can't be reasoned with and/or has unsafe demands (such as shared custody of pets that he abused). Court will hold him accountable in a settlement for SOME of the debt that I care for, will give me full custody of the pets, a long-### full order of protection, and a judicial acknowledgement of what I went through which might be useful down the line given that he is a licensed social worker who currently works with children and has been routinely working with vulnerable populations in the past. These things will never happen without court involvement. Court will also hold him accountable for the portion of the rent that he didn't pay this year while absolutely wanting to stay on the lease despite not living there. I was going to go to small claims court for that but my lawyer said it would be simpler to just include that in the divorce proceedings. On the bright side, his two main incentives to avoid(/evade?) abuse-related divorce litigation, besides money, are (1) because he's a social worker, that would be a long-term threat to his career and (2) he's in a rush to marry his next victim and to buy a house with him and has stated so. I spent 3 years trying to have him get help. Two years in I started to attend Al-Anon near daily. Therapists of relatives of addicts often say that their roles is that there only be one casualty instead of two. And there's mental illness involved, it's not "just" the addiction itself.

I can't negotiate an IRS debt that I paid off. If I pay it off now I'll just be shifting the debt to my credit cards which would be a terrible judgement call. That means I shouldn't just pay the tax debt off, but at the same time, I filed for naturalization so I need to be careful to not be found to lack GMC in not outright paying the tax debt off. Also an agreement is not feasible when the other party can't be reasoned with and/or has unsafe demands (such as shared custody of pets that he abused). Court will hold him accountable in a settlement for SOME of the debt that I care for, will give me full custody of the pets, a long-### full order of protection, and a judicial acknowledgement of what I went through which might be useful down the line given that he is a licensed social worker who currently works with children and has been routinely working with vulnerable populations in the past. These things will never happen without court involvement. Court will also hold him accountable for the portion of the rent that he didn't pay this year while absolutely wanting to stay on the lease despite not living there. I was going to go to small claims court for that but my lawyer said it would be simpler to just include that in the divorce proceedings. I spent 3 years trying to have him get help. Two years in I started to attend Al-Anon near daily. Therapists of relatives of addicts often say that their roles is that there only be one casualty instead of two. And there's mental illness involved, it's not "just" the addiction itself.

What are you referring to as being very rare (or seldom seen here) specifically? That waiver as opposed to the I-360/to joint/to divorce waiver? The combination of that waiver with the N-400 ? The addition of that waiver to joint rather than outright filing with it? 😕 I'm expecting that whoever is processing the N-400 will pick up the I-751 and ultimately speed it up overall but I wouldn't be surprised for it to delay the N-400 at least a bit. I also requested a name change to get a middle name, and I'm also expecting some scrutiny on my taxes as I'm on a payment plan for reasons mentioned earlier. Other than that I think that my abuse case is rather overwhelming and that I don't really have any GMC red flag, so I'm more worried about the procedure and timeline than by the outcome itself.