Comment by wallyrabbitbun
4 days ago
Hey Peter,
I'm still waiting for my family based GC to be approved. It was applied for in March 2023.
I've tried contacting my senators to see if it can be expedited but USCIS replied to say that it's still within "normal processing times" and that there is not yet an immigrant number available as my priority date is not earlier than the final action date.
I've been keeping a close eye on the USCIS Visa Bulletin final action dates and have noticed that they don't always move forward each month. I.e. there has been no change between July and August: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
Is this normal? Or due to the current administration?
You don't need peter for this one: The action date is indicating the place in the queue of the application they are currently working on. Every month they don't deal with 1 month worth of applications: Sometimes it might take 6 months to go through a single month of applications, other times it can move much faster. Either way, it all depends on what was submitted a long time ago, their maximum speed, and the number of visas allotted: It's possible for USCIS to run out of visas for a country and just process nothing more for the rest of the year.
So its all normal, it's been happening for decades, and there's been no significant action in the legislature to speed things up. As things are right now, there are specific queues where the delay might as well mean 'forever', because it's going to take many decades for the current processing speed to reach July 2025.
So just SOL here, and nothing that can be done but wait? :(
Bringing siblings to U.S. as a citizen is currently about a 15-17 year backlog for most countries (fourth preference), so yeah, there’s often some or a lot of waiting in these processes.
If your spouse is a green card holder and they become a citizen, then you're no longer subject to quota/queue