Infopass today... (7/6/07)
Hi madgu,
Yup. We went to our local office at 10:00 AM today. It was a different guy today from the last time, but he talked to us in as a congenial manner as the officer the last time... so I guess friendliness was probably the whole local office culture thing.
Anyway, here is what we learned today.
(1) CIS is indeed working on those 60K visa numbers, and they will keep working on them for the next three months and approve cases as they are getting ready for adjudication. So the revised visa bulletin simply means they won't accept new applications during the rest of this fiscal year, but they will approve pending cases that are good to go. Meaning they did allot those numbers to pending cases in the RD order, regardless of the security check status.
(2) My spouse's case is one of those 60K, so she does have a visa allotted. Basically, if your case is with an adjudication officer, it means you have a visa. So madgu, I think this means your wife most likely has a visa allotted.
(3) However, although they did not care about security check status of those pending cases when they allotted visa numbers, they do care in adjudicating cases. Meaning they will not approve cases with their security check pending, including FBI name checks (at least that's what the officer told us).
(4) So when your case will get approved really depends on where you are and what cases are before you in the queue. It could get approved tomorrow, it could next week, or it could in September. You just need to wait. If many of those cases before you in the queue have their security check pending, then those cases are placed at the end of the line so you are pushed forward (CIS will see if those stuck in security check get it cleared in time for adjudication this fiscal year).
(5) You being allotted a visa number does not necessarily mean that you WILL get it approved within this fiscal year. There is no guarantee. Say if they cannot reach your case in time, then you may have to wait until after October. Meaning there are possibilities there may be wasted visa numbers at the end of September.
And another thing he mentioned that is interesting was H1-b dependents seem to "get lumped together." Last time we did an infopass on 3/2, we were told something similar. They seemed to be implying (but they did not explicitly say so, so take it for whatever it may be worth) those cases are often kept on hold for a while for sorta fine-tuning (numbers calibrating). Considering the way DOS was so conservative about authorizing visa numbers during the first three quarters this FY, this seems to make sense. In fact, we had it confirmed today (and it is 5th time we've confirmed this!) my spouse got NC cleared in two weeks and got everything cleared in a month. Really no other clear reason it's still pending in that light.
We will contact the Senator's case work office again next week, and also will try to call TSC, to confirm what we learned today.
geo
