I can give it a try ...
KJ said:
Hello all:
I see a lot of discussion on the October Visa Bulletin and cut-off date and the likes. My question is more simple- how does this effect us- people who've already filed for 485.
I do understand that USCIS will not accept new I-485 applications in October until the visa numbers become current, but how does this change the time frame for us. Is our wait till October or are we looking at a later date.
Please clarify. See my detials below.
KJ
KJ,
For any 485 to be approved the Priority Date or PD (date that the labor application was filed) needs to be current. The PD being current means that there are enough visa numbers to be assigned to a 485 application. No application can be approved without a visa number. Up until 3 months ago, every category was current. This meant that there were enough visa numbers to approve every 485 application. Over the past two years, because of poor policies on the part of the USCIS, a lot of centers used up thousands of visa numbers for applications filed in 03 and 04 instead of working on cases in the proper order. What should have been done was that the cases with the oldest PDs should have been brought to the top of the queue and processed first. Instead the Service Centers started processing cases randomly without much regard for PD or RD. There was also a lot of disparity between the processing speeds of different centers. CSC and VSC used up thousands of more visas than TSC or NSC. This led to a fast depletion of visa number and unfortunately the visas that were available unfairly went to people with recent PDs or those that happened to have filed in the faster centers (CSC or VSC). This should not have happened.
Now the situation is such that there are thousands of people with PDs from 01 and 02 waiting for approvals and an equal number that are waiting to file their 485s. The people waiting to file their 485s may also have PDs from 01 and 02 because the Labor approvals have been very very slow for the past two years.
The USCIS recently realized what was going on, and decided to take the extraordinary measure of moving the PD cutoff to 98 for EB3 (India) and sometime in 99 for EB2 (India). What this means is that USCIS has kind of put a freeze on any 485 approvals for Indians till it can figure out another creative way of screwing us over. They have also stopped accepting new 485s by preventing people with approved 140s from filing new 485s. They have screwed over thousands of people in order to correct their own mistake. That is the ugly truth.
In short, people with pending 485s with PDs after the cutoff date cannot be considered for approval. It does not matter when they might have applied. If you applied in 03 and your PD is in 02 then your case will not be processed. People who have an approved 140 but have not applied for their 485 cannot do so till the PD cutoff date moves beyond the their PD.
To sum it all up, the USCIS has screwed us over because of their own mistakes. They sped up processing to please the govt. They manipulated and abused the system to improve their processing dates and now they are doing this to cover their tracks. Its an ugly game. We are caught in the cross fire.
If you go to any of the centers, you will see that their processing dates are in 04 and 05. Only we know what the truth behind those damn processing dates is.
regards,
saras
