My name is Attorney Desiree and welcome to our weekly live attorney chat. If you are unfamiliar
with our firm or new to our firm, we weekly come on here and sometimes more frequently
just to discuss recent issues in immigration, things we're hearing in consultations that might
help other people and so if you are watching this and afterwards you feel like yes, this could be
helpful for so and so please pass it along. Like, comment, or share, tag them in your comment that
way they can take advantage of this video as well. Today, I'm going to talk about expediting your
case and the things that we can do to possibly speed up the case and is that even available to
you. When we talk about can I expedite my case, we are talking about after a filing has been
completed or submitted with USCIS and several different steps along the way.
It is a multi-faceted, as with everything response, and for our purposes our clients
are usually genuinely looking for fiancé visas, spousal visas, adjustment of status applications,
naturalization, work permits, travel documents, things of that nature so that's kind of what we're
talking about in regards to expediting for our purposes. An expedite is possible in most cases
that would be relevant for us. The cases where it is not possible are those that already have what's
called premium processing. In general, those are work-type related visas so the EB visas,
the e-visas, the H1s those types of visas already have a premium processing which allows them to
kind of speed up the processing of their case to the extent possible we are still talking about
the government but as far as expediting for our purposes, there are four or five really
four different reasons two of them the first two we actually see most commonly. The first would
be if there is a severe financial loss and usually they are talking about that US citizen petitioner.
The second would be emergencies and urgent humanitarian reasons I would
say that is probably our most common tool that we use. The third reason would be a non-profit
that's in furtherance of some sort of social interest or cultural interest that the U.S has.
The fourth would be government interests and then the fifth would be if there's just a plain error
on the behalf of USCIS. I would say that happens I've not really seen that happen in too many cases
but it is one of the outlying reasons that they could expedite your case. The first two are the
ones that we see most commonly; severe financial loss and emergency are humanitarian reasons. These
can come into play in many different avenues. A job loss in and of itself could be determined
to be a severe financial loss enough that it would expedite a case for instance. If you have a client
who needs to move or be able to travel in order to keep their job say they are here on.DACOM,
we've applied for an adjustment of status or something for spouse but they need to be
able to exit country or something for their job, we do have several of those actually
and so that might be a reason that the USCIS would expedite the travel document itself.
The other most common one or just emergencies or humanitarian reasons. This could be just such a
wide range, right? Illness, severe illness, if someone back home a death in the family I will
say with most commonly I see actual USCIS take initiative in action on those where there is a
death and they need to you know go home for one reason or another but the discretion is there for
them to decide to expedite your case so it doesn't hurt to do that if in fact you have a valid reason
and can back that up with documentation. The second part of that tickler or or response of
can I expedite my case the second part of that would be what types of documentation do I need
because there are lots of different ways to expedite a case and a lot of times that really
involves me kind of pleading my case pleading the client's case over the phone with a USCIS officer
and a lot of times they will request additional evidence either on the phone with them,
fax to them while they wait on the phone, fax to them later or in an additional appointment.
Let's say we're expediting a travel document that the client needs to show up at a physical
location they'll need to bring documentation that supports why we are looking to expedite.
In the event of humanitarian reasons, we're looking for lots of medical documentation maybe
even a doctor's note or letter stating that that party cannot travel or here are the issues with
regard to why my client needs to travel home to see their parent or grandparent. Again,
those would all have to be translated just so that the officer can review them
so that would be something. Job loss or severe financial hardship of course that's going to be
mostly financial so you're really going to have to be creative sometimes with the evidence that
you provide to make sure that is shown to USCIS or that they can review it and make a determination
in your behalf so you want to put your best case forward. Expediting your case can only happen so
often so it's definitely something you would want to get guidance on. You can't just call
and request expedite every you know week or so with USCIS and so that's something to consider.
USCIS can have several different responses. We've discussed a little bit about requiring further
information that can definitely be a response and honestly I would say that is probably a
positive if they actually respond to the request. There is no requirement for USCIS to respond to
expedite requests and they look at that as just an efficiency standard if they had to reply to
everyone who requested, then that would even cause more backlogs so there is no requirement and we do
find that sometimes they just ignore the expedite request and so then you kind of wait 30 days or
so, see if that situation changes. If there's any additional evidence that you can gather in
that month period of time that would highlight the emergent and humanitarian reason to need to
expedite or the severe financial hardship and just talking for those that are really the two that
we see most often. USCIS of course can request further information they can ignore it or they can
go ahead and proceed with that and usually since they don't provide us with an answer the next
thing you know, that party is getting their travel document or whatever we have have expedited so it
just kind of brings that case to the forefront. I hope this has been helpful. If you are watching
this on replay definitely comment hashtag replay if you have any questions please put those in the
comment as well we do go back through those and if there's something that I can answer via the chat
feature or comment feature on Facebook I certainly will or if um it's something that maybe needs
a broader more explanation I'll come on and do another video like this you will see me next week
as well on Thursday the same time you can also look at our website we have a ton of resources
and videos at www.immigrationforcouples.com if you click on the resources tab there'll
be a whole bunch of different areas of the immigration realm or world that we've done
videos on so it's likely that a question that you might have is at least briefly addressed in one
of those videos I hope this has been helpful please feel free to like can share our page
especially if you think that someone may benefit from your question as well have a great day