dogdog

Hi guys,

Just a bit of background information of myself.

I am a British citizen, graduated from a British university.

After I graduated, I joined my current employer, an American financial services firm.

I spent 2 years in London with this employer, then I was relocated to Hong Kong. I have spent 2.5 years in Hong Kong. Therefore, in total, I served 4.5 years with my current American employer.

I have applied for secondment at the New York headquarter and procured internal approval. My employer submitted an individual petition for L1B (specialised knowledge) in Sept 2018 and I have provided all the relevant documents in Oct / Nov 2018.

Since then, I have been waiting for the reply from USCIS. (i.e. have been waiting for 4 months)

I understand that there was an unprecedented government shutdown from late Dec to late Jan 19.

But even taking that into account, it has been 3 months.

I understand from online sources that it usually takes 30-90 days to get my approval. But so far, I have got no news.

May I ask if anyone has also experienced / is also experiencing such delay? Hopefully, such delay is just the result of the government shutdown but not an indication of coming rejection....

Hotscot

Up to 6 months.

bc2015

I don't think the shutdown affected USICS too much. 6 months is normal for L1B. Your employer would have had the option to pay for premium processing which would have guaranteed an approval/rejection/RFE within 15 calendar days.

civilservant

O even at all. USCIS is funded by visa application fees and thus continued to operate normally during the shutdown.

However the shutdown, with the loss of FBI staff etc, will have had a minor affect in that background checks were presumably not processed during that time, but one would think that might only add a week or two to processing times.