Rete

I chuckle when I read posters talk about the long wait for K-1 and CR-1/LPR visas. How very very little they know about US Immigration History.

Both Ian and myself were around when the marriage-based visa newsgroup was formed in 1997 from the Deja Vu newsgroup US Immigration. Ian was coming to the US from Canada with a K-1 and my husband was getting his K-1 in Canada one month after Ian. The wait for a K-1 at that time ... all of 2 months and 2 weeks. Applied March 23 and had the visa by June 10.

We can attest that over the last 15 years, the wait for Immigration visas from US Consulates worldwide have been long and short any number of times. We have seem 3 month waits and waits of over 18 months. And yes, those were from US Consulates in the UK as well. We have seen AOS waits from 8 months to 2 years (which Ian and my husband waited back in 1998). We have also seen same day approval of AOS on submission of forms in Dallas if you entered with a K-1. We have seen naturalization take 3 years or more and then recently drop to 6 months. We have seen the service centers help out other service centers when their back logs were great or when additional hands on ajudicators were needed by field offices and thus rendered the service centers back logged due to lack of personnel.

At this time, everyone going through a US Marriage Based Visa and/or Adjustment of Status, should count your blessings in the speed and efficiency of the system/processing you having. We had to beg for advance parole as it was only given on an emergent basis and then by only a few field offices. Our EADs took up to six months or more to get and you might be lucky to get a stamp in your passport after the 90 day wait after submission if the field office gave it out.

Now you can make appointments to go to the field office with questions. In our days you had to take your chances and get to the field office at 4 am and wait on line and pray that the security guard allowed you to enter.

What laws would I change? Some such as allowing an HB spouse the right to work. It is a win-win situation for everyone. But then again, since the HB holder had to qualify for the visa by meeting the educational/work requirements, giving the spouse the same right as the visa holder but without having to qualify for it is exactly fair.

Should an undocumented child and also undocumented aliens be given amnesty? Yes for the child if they show good moral conduct, have graduated from high school (not just earned an GED) and be enrolled in an accredited school of higher learning. Should their parents be allowed to remain with them once the child has a green card? Yes, but once the child reaches the age of 21 the parents MUST leave the US and the child cannot seek naturalization for 10 years after obtaining their green card. If the parents do not leave the US, then they will be walked to the border/airport/bus station/train depot and not allowed to return to the US until a penalty has been paid and a ban of ten years have lapsed.

I don't believe in rewarding criminal activity which is what an amnesty does for adult undocumented aliens who knowingly entered the US, worked and lived here without regard to the laws of US immigration.

ginstwin

VWP - marriage - AOS:

I would not allow someone to enter on VWP, get married and apply for AOS,


I totally agree with you.

My daughter has just started the K1 Visa process. She is in Sydney with her fiancee and they have been together for almost 4 years.
He may have to return to the US for job reasons leaving her potentially homeless and jobless in OZ (long story but she is on his oz visa).

2 of her friends and someone else we know have successfully gone the VW AOS route successfully "pretending" that they had no intent to marry. One even had her wedding dress in her luggage !

All 3 have now received conditional GC and my daughter is going about itthe correct way but obviously is frustrated and concerned plus will suffer financially. We just didnt want her to take the risk of the potential ban.

Just out of interest one of the "not intending to marry but did" individuals filed for her AOS after I did (mine is based on my EB5 I-526 approval) and she has already received her GC and I am waiting.
Seems a bit wrong that i invest in the economy in a big way and the others come over for free and get served first!!

Rant over.

ian-mstm

Nope... but he did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!

Ian

ian-mstm

Sheila mailed the I-129F package on November 28, 1997 and I got my K-1 visa on March 27, 1998... almost 4 months to the day.


My own AOS took over 32 months... from June 15, 1998 to February 20, 2001. And you know what... I wasn't worried about it - ever! Most people today fret if something doesn't happen the next day. Most people today can't seem to function without immediate information!


I remember the DORA pilot program! Quite successful as I recall but, sadly, never much expanded upon.


It was worse than that... because there were no forms online so we had to order the forms from INS and everything was done via USPS. Too bad if they sent the wrong form and you needed another... more delay! No online updates, no InfoPass, no immigration Ombudsman, no text messages, no emails... nothing. Forums like this didn't yet exist! You worked through the forms yourself, you mailed them... and then you sat and waited patiently.

Ian

jeffreyhy

And the night before that!

Regards, JEff

jeffreyhy

And the joys of filling out the 4-part carbon-paper G-325A. The third page would be barely legible and it was impossible to press hard enough for anything to show on the fourth page.

Regards, JEff

slummymummy

So what did you guys do all day?


Interesting to read about the old-timers...

Rete - Do you think that waiting times could be made shorter (again)?

Ginstwin - hope you daughter gets her visa soon!

jeffreyhy

We did our own research, and made our own decisions, instead of asking others to do it for us. Sure. If people could be stopped from applying. And if 9/11 could be undone.

Be aware also, that Rete and Sheila had their I-129f petitions processed by the VSC (I'll wager), as did I, which was very fast with I-129f in those days but very slow with other petitions and applications. When you squeeze a balloon in one place it has to expand somewhere else. What processing times do you want to go up so that yours can go down? Or, how much more are you willing, and do you expect everyone else to also be willing, to pay? Regards, JEff

slummymummy

How can I explain my thinking here...

Say you run a lemonade stand. Quite a few people line up. You take everyone's money straight away. You already have their money so you don't really care how long they wait. You also don't want to employ anyone else to help because that means you make less money for yourself.

But, if the customers don't pay until you actually serve them, that means you only make x amount of money per time period you are working. If you employed someone else, you wouldn't lose anything because they would get paid by the customers they served. You would only lose out if you ran out of customers, ie there was no one left in line.

This is why I said earlier that it might depend on where in the visa process payments are made, and I also asked Rene if visa fees don't go towards the staff's pay when she said visa fees are paid when you actually get the visa.

Can you see the point I'm trying to make? It might still be flawed but I am thinking that it could be possible to employ some more people to process visa applications quicker, and that will also pay for those extra people to work... as long as they don't reduce the waiting times to zero! Because then they will have an excess of staff and will have to reduce wages, raise fees or fire people.

This is all theoretical but I feel so bad for people waiting so long and I'm thinking it can't be impossible to do something about it. At least they should try to reduce the normal waiting time to max 6 months to begin with. Something like 2-3-4 months sounds ideal!

jeffreyhy

Not this way. Immigration is not a lemonade stand and the proprietor is not making any money at it. Fees are set to recover the cost, there is no profit margin added on.
Visa fees are a little more complex. USCIS does only 1 thing - process immigration benefits. Consulates and consular officers provide services to American citizens as well as visa services to aliens. It's a little harder to allocate the costs between the American tax payer and the alien visa applicants. But still the same principle applies - the fees should cover the costs. Yes, it could, and in this regard I think there is a legitimate comparison to be made between government and private enterprise. In both cases the hiring party does not want to hire more workers than they need for their minimum work load over time, because once people are hired it's difficult to fire them during times when not so many are needed. And then hire and train new workers when the load picks up again. Much better to maintain a stable work force and let the processing times pick up or drop off as the demand fluctuates. And, as is done by USCIS, shift work among facilities when demand overwhelms one facility but another is doing OK. I note that you do recognize this, but none of us outside the agencies have access to the myriad details that go into determining what constitutes an optimum size work force at an affordable cost.

Recognize also that when more workers are hired, more workspace needs to be provided for them. Broom closets can hold only so many new desks. Regards, JEff

slummymummy

Good post Jeff. Also I just realized my argument was flawed because it's not the USCIS that process the visas, it's the embassies like you say. Duh. When the petition is filed the payment is made straigh away to the USCIS. Then visa fee is paid later at the embassy! I do remember now.

Yes you are probably right. They don't want to take on more staff. But I think they should. Just a few more maybe...

ian-mstm

I don't see that Jeff mentioned Embassies anywhere. The Embassy isn't involved at all. Visas are processed by the Department of State at a US Consulate or, in the case of London, by the US Consular Services.

Ian

jeffreyhy

For non-immigrant visas. In most cases the fees for immigrant visa applications are paid to the NVC. Which reminds me, the establishment of the NVC was an action taken by the Bureau of Consular Affairs to expedite visa application processing and make the visa application processing time frame more equal among the many IV posts. Less costly to add staff and centralize some of the processing here in the USA than to add staff in hundreds of locations overseas. The NVC is a contract operation, by the way.

Regards, JEff

jeffreyhy

Quite right, thank you Ian. I am careful to use the words consulate or consular section. Consulates and embassies perform distinctly different functions.

Even worse is when people say they submitted their I-130 petition to the embassy when in fact they submitted it to USCIS. At least the Bureau of Consular Affairs is a part of the Department of State, as are the embassies. USCIS is not.

Regards, JEff

slummymummy

Ok.

One more thing. Say if overnight the number of petitions filed doubled. Everyone has to pay straight away when they file so overnight the USCIS would get a chunk of more money. Then in theory they could afford to employ more staff to work on those petitions.

The question is are the current fairly long waiting times here to stay or is it just a temporary spike. If they really are due to a "permanent" higher number of applications then maybe the USCIS would/should/could take on more staff to process the petitions (I-129, I-130).

Because that is what seems to be taking the most time isn't it? Not actually the visas which are processed by the embassies............. just kidding.