485 approved – My GC story

T

thisyear

Registered Users (C)
Hi All,

After 8 years of waiting I got the Emails that card production is ordered for me and my wife. I wanted to share my details with everyone for trending purposes. Moreover, some of the lessons learned might help some folks in similar situations.
PD: March 2000
I-140 Filed: May 2003 (Regular labor process, original labor was retracted for some employer reasons).
Preference category: EB2 (India)
Service Center: TSC
I-485 Filed: April 2004
FPs: Sep 2004, Nov 2005, Jan 2008
RFE: Aug 2005
LUDs: Oct 2005 (No LUD activity after this at all).
I have a collection of EAD cards and APs. I lost count how many. Some of them have our pictures with an angled pose with right ear visible. Some of them are regular posed.

I am one of those passive waiting people letting the process take its own sweet time. I never tried letters to Congressmen, Senator, First lady, FBI, Ombudsman or WOM. I did not invest much time into researching those so I do not even know how to go about.
Early last year I was getting very antsy about the situation and called the 800 number for status information. They opened a Service Request (#1) in May 2007. I got the standard process letter in mail saying we are still processing your case blah blah blah. In July 2007 I called again and had one more Service Request (#2) open. Got another similar letter in response. In Jan 2008 I called again and had yet another Service Request (#3) open. In that call I learnt that Service request #3 is the key. After this they cannot open any more Service Requests. I got a letter in March again saying blah blah blah + If you do not see any result in 60 days call us back. I made a calendar reminder to call back in May.
Yesterday around 5PM CDT, I thought, well it is close enough to 60 days I will just go ahead and make the call. The first level guy looked at the case and said he will do another Service Request, then realized he cannot do any more of these. He transferred me to the next level, he called it “National Customer Service Center”. When I got connected to the next level I heard “This is officer Molina, Can I have your last name?” As I was spelling my last name the phone got cut. I went through the whole process again and got to the second level. This time it was officer Sanchez. She got my details and put me on hold for 5 minutes. She came back and said (in a rude voice), “your last letter asked you to wait for 60 days, it is not quite 60 days yet”. I asked “so should I call back in May?” She said (in a rude voice) “if you do not hear back from us by then”. She did not budge to give me any more status information.
Early this morning around 4am, I got the Email that Card production is ordered. (Just a coincidence with yesterday’s call?! I don’t think so.) Later at 7am I got another Email that a notice is sent welcoming the new permanent resident.
My lessons learnt throughout this process are:
- concurrent process is much much (approx 2 years) faster that non-concurrent
- do a thorough job in responding to RFEs, and respond quickly. Otherwise the delay is in terms of years
- if you think that you are outside of normal processing timelines, call the 800 number to get service request opened once every 3 months until you reach 3 SRs. This might come in handy. (I think this is what helped me in reaching the “officer” level in my phone call and move the case further.)

So finally it happened "this year".
 
COngrats and it looks like you had a different run when compared to other folks here in approaching USCIS and getting things worked out.

Enjoy the Green!!!
 
thisyear said:
Hi All,

After 8 years of waiting I got the Emails that card production is ordered for me and my wife. I wanted to share my details with everyone for trending purposes. Moreover, some of the lessons learned might help some folks in similar situations.
PD: March 2000
I-140 Filed: May 2003 (Regular labor process, original labor was retracted for some employer reasons).
Preference category: EB2 (India)
Service Center: TSC
I-485 Filed: April 2004
FPs: Sep 2004, Nov 2005, Jan 2008
RFE: Aug 2005
LUDs: Oct 2005 (No LUD activity after this at all).
I have a collection of EAD cards and APs. I lost count how many. Some of them have our pictures with an angled pose with right ear visible. Some of them are regular posed.

I am one of those passive waiting people letting the process take its own sweet time. I never tried letters to Congressmen, Senator, First lady, FBI, Ombudsman or WOM. I did not invest much time into researching those so I do not even know how to go about.
Early last year I was getting very antsy about the situation and called the 800 number for status information. They opened a Service Request (#1) in May 2007. I got the standard process letter in mail saying we are still processing your case blah blah blah. In July 2007 I called again and had one more Service Request (#2) open. Got another similar letter in response. In Jan 2008 I called again and had yet another Service Request (#3) open. In that call I learnt that Service request #3 is the key. After this they cannot open any more Service Requests. I got a letter in March again saying blah blah blah + If you do not see any result in 60 days call us back. I made a calendar reminder to call back in May.
Yesterday around 5PM CDT, I thought, well it is close enough to 60 days I will just go ahead and make the call. The first level guy looked at the case and said he will do another Service Request, then realized he cannot do any more of these. He transferred me to the next level, he called it “National Customer Service Center”. When I got connected to the next level I heard “This is officer Molina, Can I have your last name?” As I was spelling my last name the phone got cut. I went through the whole process again and got to the second level. This time it was officer Sanchez. She got my details and put me on hold for 5 minutes. She came back and said (in a rude voice), “your last letter asked you to wait for 60 days, it is not quite 60 days yet”. I asked “so should I call back in May?” She said (in a rude voice) “if you do not hear back from us by then”. She did not budge to give me any more status information.
Early this morning around 4am, I got the Email that Card production is ordered. (Just a coincidence with yesterday’s call?! I don’t think so.) Later at 7am I got another Email that a notice is sent welcoming the new permanent resident.
My lessons learnt throughout this process are:
- concurrent process is much much (approx 2 years) faster that non-concurrent
- do a thorough job in responding to RFEs, and respond quickly. Otherwise the delay is in terms of years
- if you think that you are outside of normal processing timelines, call the 800 number to get service request opened once every 3 months until you reach 3 SRs. This might come in handy. (I think this is what helped me in reaching the “officer” level in my phone call and move the case further.)

So finally it happened "this year".
Click to expand...

congrats!!
 
Perseverance paid off, huh? Good luck to you!

About three years ago, I became impatient with my I485 petition (with just one year of filing)! So, I researched and found a fax number for TSC and started sending faxes with letters asking what is being done to my (our) case(s)! I would have sent about four faxes and finally I got a letter with a copy
of my fax saying they are working on the Case and will get back to me once it is adjudicated (duh!). The next week I sent a fax again asking for the status! Voila! On the Friday of that week, I got emails from CRIS saying our cases were approved.

Again that might have been a coincidence but I seriously believe that my relentless nagging has paid off.

In any case, Congratulations! Just breathe fresh air and just chill.

Good luck
howdy_howdy
//

thisyear said:
Hi All,

After 8 years of waiting I got the Emails that card production is ordered for me and my wife. I wanted to share my details with everyone for trending purposes. Moreover, some of the lessons learned might help some folks in similar situations.
PD: March 2000
I-140 Filed: May 2003 (Regular labor process, original labor was retracted for some employer reasons).
Preference category: EB2 (India)
Service Center: TSC
I-485 Filed: April 2004
FPs: Sep 2004, Nov 2005, Jan 2008
RFE: Aug 2005
LUDs: Oct 2005 (No LUD activity after this at all).
I have a collection of EAD cards and APs. I lost count how many. Some of them have our pictures with an angled pose with right ear visible. Some of them are regular posed.

I am one of those passive waiting people letting the process take its own sweet time. I never tried letters to Congressmen, Senator, First lady, FBI, Ombudsman or WOM. I did not invest much time into researching those so I do not even know how to go about.
Early last year I was getting very antsy about the situation and called the 800 number for status information. They opened a Service Request (#1) in May 2007. I got the standard process letter in mail saying we are still processing your case blah blah blah. In July 2007 I called again and had one more Service Request (#2) open. Got another similar letter in response. In Jan 2008 I called again and had yet another Service Request (#3) open. In that call I learnt that Service request #3 is the key. After this they cannot open any more Service Requests. I got a letter in March again saying blah blah blah + If you do not see any result in 60 days call us back. I made a calendar reminder to call back in May.
Yesterday around 5PM CDT, I thought, well it is close enough to 60 days I will just go ahead and make the call. The first level guy looked at the case and said he will do another Service Request, then realized he cannot do any more of these. He transferred me to the next level, he called it “National Customer Service Center”. When I got connected to the next level I heard “This is officer Molina, Can I have your last name?” As I was spelling my last name the phone got cut. I went through the whole process again and got to the second level. This time it was officer Sanchez. She got my details and put me on hold for 5 minutes. She came back and said (in a rude voice), “your last letter asked you to wait for 60 days, it is not quite 60 days yet”. I asked “so should I call back in May?” She said (in a rude voice) “if you do not hear back from us by then”. She did not budge to give me any more status information.
Early this morning around 4am, I got the Email that Card production is ordered. (Just a coincidence with yesterday’s call?! I don’t think so.) Later at 7am I got another Email that a notice is sent welcoming the new permanent resident.
My lessons learnt throughout this process are:
- concurrent process is much much (approx 2 years) faster that non-concurrent
- do a thorough job in responding to RFEs, and respond quickly. Otherwise the delay is in terms of years
- if you think that you are outside of normal processing timelines, call the 800 number to get service request opened once every 3 months until you reach 3 SRs. This might come in handy. (I think this is what helped me in reaching the “officer” level in my phone call and move the case further.)

So finally it happened "this year".
Click to expand...
 
Update - cards received

Hello All,

I just wanted to post the update to complete the story.
I received the cards in mail after 6 days of the approval Email.
 
congrats mate...enjoy ur green.

your story had some useful information which I am sure will help many people in this forum..especially about service requests.

thanks once again for posting your story.

regards
gcfinder
 
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