I’m currently sponsoring my parents for permanent residency and the process has been very slow. We filed I-130 and I-485 concurrently back in February, 2013. Seven months later it appears that we have to wait a few more months to get the green cards. Since parents of a U.S. citizen don’t need visa numbers, this used to be a quick process – not any more.
Today I received a Notice of Potential Interview Waiver from USCIS with the good news first:
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has identified your application as a potential interview waiver case. This means that we may not need to interview you to complete your application. However, if we later determine that an interview is required, we will schedule an interview appointment and notify you.”
Before we had time to celebrate, here came the bad news:
“Due to workload factors not related to your case, USCIS anticipates a delay in completing your case. Presently, we anticipate that delay to be approximately 6 months from the date of this letter. If you do not receive a decision or other notices of action from USCIS by that date, please contact our National Customer Service Center (NCSC) at the number below.”
Essentially USCIS is saying that your case looks good, but we’re so busy working on other stuff that you have to wait longer than we originally told you.
This letter brought back memories, or nightmares, of my own experience waiting 5 years in the dreaded EB queue, wondering what else was going to come up.
I have exactly the same situation! Most important that our relatives and parents are legally staying in this country and I believe that what government wants form us. I have an elderly mother who has health conditions. There is no way to send her back to her country (she wouldn’t be able to make it). I legally applied for her green card and I will wait no matter how long.
If I could choose I’d rather have the interview and get it over with. Who knows what else would come up?! But I agree with you that at least they’re staying here legally and we don’t have to worry about their status. Good luck and keep us posted.
what’s the hold-up? i guess it’s because Obama allow millions of under-aged illegal immigrants to change status in the states, all of sudden, USCIS workers are being overwhelmed by such a tremendous increase of workload, they just simply don’t have enough time to process the top priority applications (for immediate relatives of a US citizen), logically no quota is needed for this category, these cases should be processed in the quickest manner, but Obama sees those under-aged illegals as his priority, because all those kids may become potential voters for democrats once their status have changed, it would be a big gain for democrats, besides that, most of those illegals have poor education, no skills, they will be much more dependent on government assistance than those employment-based immigrants, therefore, it would be more likely that they would cast votes for democrats.
I think you have a point, that DACA is likely the reason why some other cases are being delayed. USCIS publishes monthly statistics on DACA processing and it is indeed quite fast by USCIS standard.
My husband who is an american citizen has filled d I-130 for me since December 2013 but just this month my case status on d usics site was changed saying my alien registration number has been changed but my husband never received any physical mail from the immigration. plz I want to know. If u say the duration now is 5momths for I-130 then in my case this is d 6th month what do I do & how much longer am I still expected to wait? Plz I need to have a clue about this..