Hello BritishExpats

Me and my wife met in college in 2014. We then decided to get married after I finished college and went home. We applied for the K1 Visa. We were approved and everything went smoothly. I arrived in the US in July 2016. We got married in August 2016. We then filed all the subsequent forms and my EAD arrived late 2016 and I found work on the 1st of Jan 2017!
I worked for the whole of 2017, but for this whole year I did not have any heath insurance. (Don't know whether that is or will be a problem?)
Anyway worked the whole year and filed the AOS combo and was waiting for the interview as we were called in for it. We had the interview on July 19th 2017. We were approved but we were given RFE for my medicals to be signed off by a USCIS civil surgeon. We had 30 days to get the RFE back to the local USCIS office. I had taken care of all the paperwork up until this point very well, but for some reason the cover sheet that was given to us did not make it into the packet I sent back to them and that lead to the package being lost.
We did not notice I did not put the coversheet in the packet for some time. We waited to hear back as we thought they had received it.
By this point. We were also moving apartments and I asked my wife to change our address online. I bet you can figure out where this is going. The address change was denied as I the beneficiary was the only one allowed to change the address but when we looked online it said that the address change had already been submitted. We called up and they said it must have gone through. Did not know how incompetent the people on the phone are at the USCIS.

So as we waited for a response, we got a notice on the app that the AOS had been denied so we called and called to find out what the **** had happened and they said wait for the denial letter. We waited. We called again to make sure the address change had gone through because we had received a letter from them regarding something else.
We finally lost it and got an immigration officer on the phone and he told us our address was not changed thats why we did not receive the notice. So we asked him to send it to us at our new address. He changed our address then and there and re routed the notice to us.

He sent it to us and it said, your AOS has been denied due to abandonment. You have 30 days to appeal this otherwise it becomes final. The letter sent to us was sent on October 26th and we did not receive the letter until March 10th! That is because of the USCIS constantly telling us to wait for the letter, your address must have changed. So it was already final when we received it!
The letter said you must begin making arrangements to leave the US as soon as possible. So being cautious of being out of status for more than 180 days I left within two weeks of the letter and counted around 150 days of overstay due to all of that.
It has been an absolute nightmare for the both of us. We spoke to three lawyers and two said leave one said go.
With the conflicting information and us both being young and not wanting to ruining our future forever we made the decision for me to go and we filled the I-130 immediately.

I guess our questions, are will our new case be okay?
Will me not having health insurance the whole time affect us negatively?

Thank you guys for any help you may be able to offer.
G&T

No clue.

No.

1. It doesn't seem like you have an overstay that would result in a ban, so my layman's guess is that you should be fine.

2. No, lack of health insurance does not impact immigration.

Rene

Sounds to me that you do have an overstay but the dates are confusing, if you do you will need to file a waiver, you will find out at the interview.

Gazsaxon, exactly how many days was your overstay?

Rene

What new case? Your explanation is far from complete. Do mean to imply that you left the US rather than to refile a new adjustment of status form or try to reopen the old case? Are you now living in the UK and are waiting to go the Immediate Relative Visa (IR-1) route with an interview at the US Embassy in London? Did you not call and change your address and didn't your wife file the I-865 to change her address as she is the one that completed the affidavit of support and needed to update the USCIS records separately from you? How did two attorneys tell you to leave and one told you to go? Do you mean that all three told you to leave the US? If you were out of status only 150 days then there is no ban as it is 180 days I believe that incurs a ban. Do you have all the paperwork and exact dates of everything that has occurred so that you can bring it to the interview in London when you are finally scheduled for one in approximately 12-14 months from now?

Noorah, so if the count of overstay is from the date on the denial letter. It would be from the 26th of October 2017 until the 27th of March 2018. Which is 143 days.
If the overstay counts from when I entered the US or when my 90 day period to get married was then I am way over? Can you clarify when it would start from? Would it start counting from the day we were denied?
I check online on the overstay count with my passport number and there is amount of overstay days on there but I don't trust that too much.

Thank you

I apologize I tried to read over my explanation and make sure it was a good explanation. I left the US yes because we spoke to three lawyers, can you believe two of them told me to leave, only one told me stay so we went with the majority to make sure we were not in trouble!
We have filed the I-130 Petition now and patiently waiting for a response. Its been horrid but we are dealing with it the best we can.

My wife tried to change our address online under her name at the time and a week or so later we got an email saying she can not change the address because she is not the applicant. So we submitted an address change in my name but then a notification on the screen where you change the address, it said your request had already been submitted. We also received a letter from USCIS to our new address and we called up and asked has our address changed since we have received this letter and the person said. "I presume so". So we called again to clarify and they said "it must have changed". So we thought okay it must have changed. So we waited to hear anything back about the RFE.

Then the unfortunate events started to unfold. Receiving the denial notification, not receiving the notice until we spoke to a tier 2 immigration official. Then when we did receive the denial notice which I have attached it was way overdue for any appeal.

Thanks for your help guys.

Gazsaxon,

Believe it or not, this kind of thing is a fairly common occurrence. USCIS is not well known for getting changes of address in their system. By the way, the change of address of sponsor Rete was referring to is the I-865 form which can't be done online, it's a paper form. Water under the bridge now anyway.

As crazy as it sounds, USCIS takes no blame that you didn't receive notices that went to an old address, even if you successfully changed your address. The AOS gets denied. Others who have had this happen have gotten a lawyer in the USA to re-open the case and continue on with AOS in the USA (they didn't leave the USA).

Now that you have left the USA and have filed an I-130, you're on this track now and have to continue it. So the biggest question is, did you accumulate any overstay in the USA since your AOS was denied? And if so, how many days? I don't know the answer, but it might be worth a 1-time consultation with an immigration attorney to find out, if you can. That way you know what you're dealing with when you go to your visa interview.

Rene

I'm sorry, I don't know.

I didn't know one could do such a thing. What's the number of days shown on there?

Rene

Time for a consultation with an immigration lawyer. I wouldn't DIY this now.

Noorah

Thanks for the reply. I understand they don't take responsibility. Makes sense. Its not their fault.
With the overstay when do you think it would start to count from?
Would it be from the Denial Letter notice or from the when I entered the US?

Gareth

I'm not an attorney but reason would make me say from the date of the denial letter. If there were a date on that letter saying when you needed to leave the US by, then it would be that date. My belief is that you are considered "in status" as long as your petition was pending and that would not be considered as part of the overstay.

There is some Asian sounding law firm with worldwide offices that is often touted on here with hit and miss results but it is purported they are well versed in overstay issues. I don't recall the full name but I believe the name "Fong" is included in the title. You want to have a one time consultation with them and/or someone knowledgeable in overstay issues. You can find one here: https://www.aila.org/ Although your track record with the past three immigration attorneys was dismal, perhaps this time it will be with someone top shelf.

You can also search the USCIS site for overstay as well as the rest of the www.

There is no date on the letter which is strange right? It just said start making arrangements to leave the asap. I wish I could show you the letter but the forum wont let me until I post 5 times. Will give the Attorney a run.

We don't need to see it.