If you’re filing a case with USCIS, prepare to wait 30 or even 60 days to get a receipt.
Yes, 30 or 60 days. These are updates I received from the American Immigration Lawyers Association
national conference that we had last week. And I want to present to you even more updates
in this video about receipt delays, cases being rejected for no reason, and many other
interesting updates. So, what are you waiting for? I'll see you on the other side. In this
video, we're going to talk about USCIS basically delaying issuing, receipt notices. I mean,
receipt notices are the basic thing we want to get when we file an application with USCIS.
And right now, it's taking forever. And we're going to talk about this, what it means for
you, and a few other interesting things that are happening right now based on recent updates
that I was able to get at our national conference of immigration attorneys from last week. But
before we talk about that, if you're here for the first time, welcome, and make sure
you subscribe to our channel. Click that bell to be notified because videos come out every
week. You don't want to miss the videos and the lives and give us a big like, because
if not, YouTube is not going to recommend the video to more people and people will never
be able to see this video. Alright. So, I am Jacob Sapochnik. I am an immigration attorney.
I'm located in San Diego, California. And I've been practicing immigration for the past
16 years, and we help clients in all 50 states. And before I talk about the substance of this
video, I want to thank you, guys, for watching my videos, supporting, commenting, sharing,
giving me ideas for videos. You, guys, are the best so I do this for you. So, let's dive
right into these video updates. So, 60 days… 30, 60 days to get a receipt note. This is
crazy. And you've been noticing this. This is one of my biggest complaints right now.
People are filing cases with USCIS and they're not getting receipts, even checks are being
cashed. So, first of all, based on this update that we received, USCIS specifically admitted
that, currently, it's taking 30 to 60 days to actually get a receipt notice. And the
suggestion is that if you file… whether you file it at the lockbox or with the service
centers, it's the same thing. They're experiencing delays. The suggestion is that if you file
the case, the first thing I suggest you do is if you use a check, I usually recommend
for you to use checks, you should be able to check with your bank and see if that check
was cashed. If the check was cashed, you want to print the back of the check and you can
see that if the USCIS has cashed that check, there’s going to be your case number, it’s
going to be on the back of the check. Okay. Normally, they should be cashing the checks,
obviously, before a receipt is going to be issued. So, if you use a check to file your
application, which I highly recommend you do, then you'll be able to see already with
the bank printout of the check the case number of your petition if it's a WAC or EAC, or
wherever the case is filed, and then you're going to be able to log in with that receipt
notice on the USCIS website, and actually get your case status before the receipt is
actually going to be issued. Now, if your checks have not been cashed yet, which is
happening as well, remember, right now, people are waiting almost a month for the checks
to be even cashed. So, obviously, it's not going to do any good if your checks are not
being cashed, that means that your receipts and are going to be issued as well. But the
first indicator is, even before getting a receipt notice, is tracking the payment method.
So, if your checks have been cashed, receipt numbers are going to be in the back and you're
also going to be able to track the status of the case. But if after six weeks, you're
not getting a receipt, the recommendation from USCIS is to email the lockbox or the
service center and make an inquiry. Make sure you keep very, very good records of shipment,
receipt, if you send it by FedEx or USPS Prime, make sure you keep all these records because
it's really, really important. If you don't have proof of delivery, if you're going to
lose that, and USCIS is not going to find that information, then you're not going to
be able to make any progress with your case. So, that's the first thing. Delays are happening.
The second thing that is happening is that, specifically with the I-751s, the petition
to remove conditions, those cases, the USCIS had a glitch in their system in that service
center were processing them, and none of the 751s were getting any receipts. So, essentially,
those cases were locked. They will not issue receipts. They’re not working with them.
There was a major problem with the 751 processing. That was an update that we received from USCIS
at that conference, and I'm passing it right here to you. So, if you're filing a petition
to remove conditions I-751, do not be surprised that you're not going to get a receipt for
months until they're fixing this issue, and hopefully, it's going to be fixed in the next
few weeks. But the reason that you haven't received your 751 notices is because of that,
because there was a problem with their system. And they admitted it. They admitted that 751
application, specifically, had their own problem with receipts. And those were even further
delayed. Some people report even eight to 10 weeks without a receipt on a 751. And again,
the 751 is really, really important because that is usually the proof for somebody’s
status. When you file a 751 you normally get a receipt. That receipt is an 18 months extension
of your status. So, a lot of people didn’t really have that. They were not able to continue
employment, or they need to travel. That was a big, big disaster with those 751s, and nobody
knew what's going on. Even when you were calling the service center, they had no idea what
was going on. Essentially, they were not telling the public that there was an issue. And the
first time we learned about it was last week at that conference where USCIS ombudsman person
reported the fact that 751 had a big glitch. And as a result, they were not issuing receipts.
Those receipts are really, really important. So, it's being fixed right now. But if you've
seen this for the first time, be aware that that's a big issue. Another thing is forms
are being rejected, essentially being sent back to applicants for not completing them
completely. So for example, if you leave blanks on a form, on a 45 or I-130, instead of leaving
blanks, you have to put “NA,” “not available,” something like that. People that didn't complete
certain boxes, their entire applications were rejected. And this has been happening in the
past six months. Now, this is devastating because it resulted in people losing their
petitions, they lost their status, many, many things happen because of incomplete applications,
whether they were filed by attorneys or people do themselves. Some attorneys didn't even
know about that as well. So, remember, once again, petitions will be rejected for not
completing the forms completely meaning that do not leave box empty. People are missing
the deadlines and overstaying as a result, losing benefits. There was a case example
that was brought to the attention of our association of somebody who was going through the asylum
process, they were filing for the adjustment of status for a spouse, and he left a few
boxes empty on their form, date of birth or something or country of birth, and the entire
application was rejected, and that person lost their status. And now there's no guarantee
that they will be able to stay in the US and finish the process. So, it's devastating.
So, things like that happening. Again, this is something new. This wasn't a policy of
USCIS in the past. In the past, if you send them an application, and some boxes were left
empty, they will still take it and continue to process the case. Worst case scenario,
they will send you an RFE if it's a box that is really important, for example, like your
date of birth or name or second name, there was missing, they'll just send you an RFE
and ask you to complete it. Now, they're rejecting full applications because they were not fully
completed, essentially left blank on certain sections of the application. So, please be
aware. When you complete your USCIS application, make sure you complete every single box on
that application. Otherwise, it will be completely rejected. It will result in you, missing a
deadline, or even more severe consequences to your status or your case. So once again,
if you're not getting your receipts, and it's been six weeks, make sure you email the lockbox
where the case is filed, let them know the receipts were not issued. And they should
be able to ask you for your tracking information, everything you need to show them that you
actually did send the case, and they're going to try to help you. They promised that they're
going to be starting to be more proactive. And they're going to look into the rejections
of these empty forms because it created… thousands of people were harmed by this. And
once again, it's important to know that if you were impacted by any of these, by the
blank forms of 751s, or receipt delays, let me know in the comments. Also, an important
update is that, as you remember, USCIS announced they're going to be more flexible with the
deadlines, where if you have a deadline during the pandemic, they extended the deadlines
by 60 days for appeals for deadlines for RFEs and things like that. Well, we had a few cases
where they didn't respect the deadline, they rejected cases because they came late. And
I know more people have also experienced that so if you also experience denial or rejection
after a deadline that happened during the COVID period of extension, where they specifically
gave an extra 60 days for every deadline, let me know as well in the comments because
we need to gather more of that information so we can pass it to our association as they're
preparing another lawsuit. Perfect. So, we talked about a lot of things in this video.
Let me know in the comments what you think. And also, don't forget to join our private
Facebook group if you want to continue the discussion, and get information like this
firsthand before it's released anywhere. Make sure you join the Facebook group. The link
is in the description of this video. Once again, let me know what you think of other
video topics and things that you're concerned about. I'll make sure to make those videos
for you as well. So, thanks for watching. I'll see you in our next video.