EAD (WorkPermit)

AOS delivered Chicago IL 09/18/2019 at 1pm
Fees showed up in my credit card 09/24/2019
Notice of rejection 09/26/2019 fees incorrect/in mail on 10/02/19 😐

Resubmitted 10/02/2019
Arrived 10/05/2019 (Saturday)

Priority date: Oct.7

10/17/19 checks cashed (1140+85+535)
Text message 10/18/19 case received
10/24/19 received letters in mail
11/02/19 received biometrics in mail
11/04/19 biometrics done
12/03/2019 RFE over some documents already sent with the package 😟
12/07/19 RFE in the mail
12/31/19 sent a response
01/06/2020 USCIS recieved response for RFE
03/5/2020 updated finger prints for I-131
03/9/2020 received the update letter for the I-131
03/10/2020 contacted Ombudsman office & my congresswoman reached out to them on my behalf the same day
03/10/2020 Ready to schedule interview (Day 156)
03/13/2020 Ombudsman got back to me: “While we understand your concerns, our review indicates that your case is within normal processing times.  Also, your case is pre-processing at the National Benefits Center (NBC).  Because your case is currently within normal processing times, our office will be closing this matter.”
03/16/2020 new card is being produced (day 161)

Here are some points that I am sharing here hoping they’d be helpful for others, please note these are my observations of my own process as well as others in this forum, and thus are subjective and also subject to change in future as the immigration process and regulations are changing.

1) Do not contact the ombudsman office unless your case/s are really outside normal processing, if you do, they’d send you a generic email/mail that they cannot help you yet.

2) Do reach to your representative if you think they will follow up on your behalf, there MAY be positive results, but do not expect too much and too fast. It is free of charge and may work, so why not? In my case, I cannot tell if it helped or not, I think more so it was a coincidence that USCIS got back to me a day after my congressional inquiry had been submitted.

3) Please be aware if you decide to expedite your I-765 and or I-131, if approved, it will take at least a month before USCIS issues/produces the benefit. Please do not jeopardize your I-485 by showing that you are too poor or too sick, both, under some circumstances, can disqualify you from immigration benefits.

4) It seems USCIS is committed to get back to applicants within 60 days after the receipt of RFEs and in my case it did get back to me after 65 days. That being said, I have observed over this period of time, that people with RFEs on I-130, usually bona fide relationships, had gone through a more fastidious reviewing process in which cases are assigned to supervisors, which in turn slows down the process considerably.

5) Nowadays, there are many applicants who receive their interim benefits (AP+EAD) shortly before their green card or green card interview. It is because the agency does not afford to review cases fast enough to produce both results in a timely manner. Why? I do not know! Maybe being understaffed, having too many cases, or simply policy matters, or combination of all, it is NOT clear to me.

6) it seems that USCIS clears up USC cases faster than those of LPRs, and I think the agency divides cases and reviews them based on category (October 2019 immediate relative of USC or LPR), in this way depending on how they divided and sorted out cases, sometimes they get back to people in Nov or Dec earlier than the ones in August of the same year, for instance. Also, not all cases require the same amount of reviewing, some for whatever reasons (security related like background checks especially in case of men with prior military training, or immigration violations like working without authorization or overstaying nonimmigrant visas, and so on and so forth) call for extra attention and thus may take longer to be adjudicated at pre-processing centers like NBC. At any rate, this difference in timing is too petty to be regarded as unfair, unjust or anything of that matter, at least in the eyes of the agency!

7) Cases stay at main centers like NBC until they are scheduled for interview so if your case says it is ready to be scheduled for interview, it means your case is still at the hand of NBC or other centers and currently awaiting for your field office’s availability. Also ready to be scheduled is the final ruling that centers like NBC can make. The rest of the process is adjudicated by USCIS field offices.

8) For the sake of skewing the average of processing time, USCIS MAY get back to some applicants way early like within 2 to 3 months, I think the agency MAY do this to decrease the end average result! And some applicants are just lucky to be handpicked! This may be just my imagination, I have no evidence to back this claim up!

9) At the end, please be patient and keep your sanity! Immigration is a timely manner. Try not to get drown in the waiting process, for the most part the agency gets back to you within the normal processing time. USCIS is a professional experienced apparatus which strives to deliver benefits to qualified applicants while protecting the rights and safety of the Americans. In retrospect, several months sooner or later does not make much difference any way.

Thank you all for being a wonderful & instructive group. Once again except my timelines that are facts, the rest is my deliberations and therefore not immune to bias.

Good luck everyone!