Folinskyinla

Please do NOT shoot the messenger:

Service Center Operations gave the following statement to AILA:

"The public notice telling overseas petitioners to file their I-130s with the CSC and the VSC was pulled late Friday evening, 1/26, shortly after it was posted. The companion I-130 forms entry page was pulled Monday morning, 1/29. The revised filing instructions for overseas petitioners are not yet in effect, pending further discussions with DOS. In the meantime, we have provided appropriate instructions to the contracts and records staff at the CSC and VSC to ensure that any I-130s received from petitioners residing overseas are not rejected.”

Rete

I, for one, don't have a clue what the hell that is all about. When and where was the public notice that told US citizens overseas to file at those two service centers? So now they are all in limbo. My advice to them all would be to use the ten foot pole.

meauxna

The instruction was posted at uscis.gov for two days or less, instructing overseas USCs to file to the US, based on geography.
That notice is now removed. Word is they are working with State to figure out how they can resume the process.

The limbo *should* be short lived. The option is there, as it ever was, for the USC to file in the US. If I had a petition ready to file myself, I'd wait a couple of weeks--it will not make a difference in the bigger picture, and it might make things simpler to wait and see.

Since we can't advise people to use the 10 foot pole.



This was brought to the VJ board, from the Bangkok CIS webpage:

""At this time, however, USCIS offices overseas does not have procedures in place to accept new filings of I-130 petitions for Alien relatives. The department of state will not accept fees for any I-130 petitions for alien relatives, and we do not have the ability to independantly receive fees in our overseas offices. As such, we cannot accept any I-130 petition for Alien relative filing at the Bangkok District office of USCIS or any other USCIS office overseas. Please check our website in the upcoming week for further guidance as to approved filing procedures: www.uscis.gov We expect guidance to be forthcoming shortly."

Note the plurals.

One petitioner was given info when contacting either Moscow or Kiev (not clear):
"People are being told if there is no USCIS office in your country then hold on to your petition for just a little longer. Or you can file with a USCIS office in the USA. "

MrF, yours will be good news to the USC living in NZ who just mailed his I-130 to VSC--he is concerned that they will reject it when they see his NZ mailing address (nevermind that he was supposed to send it to CSC...)

Folinskyinla

Rete:

If you recall, I noted that regulations provide for filing at DHS abroad after Condi's cable. The DHS posted that notice on its website and took it down. However, the on-line instructions for the I-130 form said where to file. I haven't looked at that.

AILA posted a blurb of what they had been informed of and the quotation marks indicate what DHS said -- i.e. the quotes were in the AILA blurb. I did not post the AILA blurb itself.