Need advice on when to send 1-485 application
Here is the situation:
I-130 was approved 10 years ago under FB4 and our priority date is Sept 1997. We started out the application as CP, and based on that, INS recently sent us a letter asking us to provide further information and documents for the application, because according to them, when its within 9 months of your priority date coming current, INS would start working on your case. However we've been here in the US for years now, so we communicated back to INS stating that we would like to go through the AOS process instead of CP, then they responded that we should "confirm our intent to do the AOS process" and they listed everyone's names in the letter.
Now our lawyer feels that the letter from INS asking us to "confirm" signals to us that we can go ahead and send in the I-485 application now. Please bear in mind that current priority date on the visa bulletin for FB4 is March 1997 and our priority date is Sept 1997. Although INS had mentioned earlier that its ok to start on the application if your priority date is within 9 months from now, but we have a feeling that that is referring to the CP process that we started out with. Now that we are intending to switch to the AOS process, would it be safe to go ahead and send the 1-485 application right now since we were told to "confirm" that intend to go thru the AOS process? Or is it better to just wait till our priority date becomes current before sending in the application? And if its better to wait, how do we respond to INS request that we should "confirm" our intent to do AOS?
Our lawyer said she called INS office and someone there told her it was ok to send in the application now, but we just wanted to be double sure before doing that because although we are very eager to get our application started because we need our documents urgently, we've been through a lot with AOS issues, and having waited this long (10 years), and now paying the new fees, we dont want to risk another 1-485 denial due to "visa number unavailable" because our priority date is not current. So please advise.
Thanks.