Congrats to hopeny2003! Good luck for your 140/485.
cubiclefun &:
My guess is it will take at least another year for NY to clear april/01. If you look MD and NJ threads, MD took 4 months on 4/26/01, another 3 and half on 4/27/01. NJ took 6 months on 4/27/01, 7 months on 4/30/01. NY has much more 4/01 LC pending than NJ, almost double NJ according murthy's site. Unless NY has more resource, which I doubt, it will take at least one more year to reach May/01.
In addition, NY seems to put more efforts on non-RIR. In about a year, non-RIR moved from 3/1998 to 3/2000 while RIR stays on 4/01.
Those 800 'lotto' cases were picked in 12/02 for 4 month 'process improvement drive'. It has ended in 3/03. Currently NY SWA works only on 4/25/01.
NY has bottlenecks besides 4/01. In Sep/01(?), there was a regulation for non-RIR to transfer to RIR, so Sep/01 is likely another big hump. (correct me if I 'm wrong)
PERM won't help. From the latest PERM news, it won't be easy to convert RIR cases to PERM cases.
Sorry from all these disappointing.