Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing "Outside of Normal USCIS Processing Time Requests or Inquiries to USCIS". Especially here recently in the malaise of this post COVID response, I don't even know what you want to call it, where things are kind of reopening, we have had a backlog. It has been a pretty severe backlog this past year although I will say stuff that was at NVC is really moving along out here to the Embassy but USCIS seems to be moving a little slower especially when it comes to receiving and sending out receipt notices.

But this video is on the processing time, whatever you want to call it, the “standard” processing times associated with a petition. I get a lot of inquiries from folks the day after a case goes past the "normal" processing times. I would make a strong argument that there isn't a "normal" processing time. Now I am not saying that if you file an I-130 and you have been sitting around for months and months and months and months, that perhaps some kind of inquiry is not warranted. It is going to be circumstantially dependent but a lot of people ask me about making an inquiry and I don't think it really does much candidly. It might cause them to remember that that case is out there but I mean they have got filing cabinets probably as far as the eye can see. In fact I would probably liken it to the ending scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark where they take the lost ark into the giant warehouse and it just gets lost. I suspect USCIS isn't too far unlike that at their service centers. I am not saying that in a pejorative sense. I just simply mean they have got a lot going on. They have just got a lot of cases. I am also not defending them. They need to get this stuff done in a timely manner.

That said, there is a very big difference between a substantial amount of time outside normal processing windows and a day outside of normal processing windows. Some of my clients get a little miffed with me because they will say "why don't we send something?" and I will say “let's give them a second”. Usually within a pretty reasonable period of time, oftentimes it is almost like a week after the time somebody wants me to send one of these in, that some action occurs on it in its own right. The other thing is again I really don't like that USCIS even came up with this notion of "standard" or "normal" processing times or "outside of normal processing times". Well, especially in the aftermath of all this COVID where they were shut down for so long, what is a normal processing time? I am not defending them. It is just the system is what it is and my personal opinion is oftentimes it may not be the best use of resources to be inquiring on something that is one day past this sort of arbitrary time frame that has been set by USCIS. Again, it is going to be factually and circumstantially dependent. There are cases we send stuff in on because USCIS loses stuff from time to time. It is one of the reasons I like doing paper filings because it is much less likely that stuff gets lost. I don't like things being on a server where they can just "poof" and disappear.

So long story short, they exist, we do use them but relatively infrequently and mostly because oftentimes it is just not warranted and usually things process out in about the time frame they normally would.