Welcome to our weekly live attorney chat. I'm Attorney Desiree Koger-Gustafson with Immigration
for Couples and if you are new to our firm, we regularly host these live chats to talk about
recent developments in the immigration world or just in general what we're hearing from
consultations or other things that have come up comments on our Facebook page, YouTube videos,
those types of resources that we then hear questions or concerns from people and so we
weekly come on and do these, sometimes even more frequently, put together these videos to help kind
of deal with some of those questions and issues and take away some of that mystification that
comes with USCIS and immigration law in general. If you're new to our firm and our Facebook page,
we have a lot of resources and videos on our website so feel free to go like our page and
get on website and look at the resources tab. There's lots of different videos and
resources and of course, we have a very large YouTube channel as well. Many of you
have heard about the book What to Expect When You're Expecting and with our clientele,
that might even be an appropriate book. Today's topic, I'm going to take a little twist on that
and talk about what to expect when you're the petitioner or when you're petitioning with USCIS.
Our rule number one would be to expect the unexpected. USCIS is a large bureaucratic
agency. There is a mail room of people where they go through those initial applications,
they're checking boxes. If all the boxes don't get checked, you're likely to get
an RFE, a request for more evidence on certain aspects of your case. It might even be aspects
that you've already dealt with and they're asking for you to return information you've already given
to them. The mailroom, as you're probably aware, can be huge and they can lose pieces of that. Not
only are our applications put together as the most complete and perfect as we can get them
to make sure that we solidify your permanent record with immigration but also we go through
them with a fine-tooth comb. Make sure everything all the details match and that we've just provided
all the documentation that we possibly could because sometimes we may think of something or
be aware of something that you haven't thought of but will be good relationship evidence and of
course we are just dealing mostly with couples but it applies in almost any immigration case.
The last thing I would like to suggest or what to expect when you're the petitioner is that expect
that this is out of your control. You aren't, in many ways, gonna be able to control what USCIS
does, what the NVC does, what the consulate does, how fast they're processing things, how efficient
they are, how many people they've hired to be able to catch up on COVID backlogs. Just
expect that a lot of that is out of your control. There are tools in our toolbox that we can use and
frequently do to get cases unstuck or to cause movement on a case that maybe hadn't had prior
been solved but for the most part, a lot of this is out of your control and the responsibility on
the petitioner or their legal representation both is that we put forth the best application that we
possibly can to USCIS in order to be able to set you up for success. I think that if you
have those three things in mind, then you may be pleasantly surprised with your result and how your
case processes. Thank you for tuning in today, if you are watching this or catching this on replay,
please comment hashtag replay and like comment subscribe to our page. Share it with those that
you might think might have an interest in what we have to say and we will see you next week.