If you have gone through a consular processing spouse visa process, once you arrive in the United
States with your visa, your green card will arrive in the mail. We've had a lot of individuals
that are asking, "Should I be nervous? It's been several months since my arrival to the United
States and I still haven't received my green card. When can I expect to receive this green
card and what happens if I don't receive my green card? What can I do? Who can I contact?"
Again, I am talking about a green card for an individual who completed the spouse visa
consular processing process which is for individuals who are outside of the United
States and attend an interview at a US embassy or consulate abroad. The US embassy or consulate
abroad, when you are approved they will put a visa in your passport.
That visa, once you enter the United States, a CBP officer will put another stamp in your passport
and together, that stamp and that visa is actually your green card even though they call it a visa.
That serves as proof of your residency, you're being a green card holder for a year
while you wait for your actual physical green card and Social Security card to arrive in the mail.
The question that a lot of people have been asking is it's been several months or
many months and I still haven't received my green card. I'd like to go over what we are seeing
currently, especially with COVID, when we are seeing individuals receiving their green card
and the steps that you can take if you still haven't received it after a certain amount of time.
The first thing that I want to make sure everybody knows is that when you go to your
interview at the US embassy or consulate, if you are approved that day or if they approve you after
your interview and you receive your visa by a courier or sometimes you'll
go and pick it up, they will give you a new receipt number. A lot of people don't pay attention to that.
They don't notice that and that receipt number is your receipt number for your green card.
It starts usually with "IOE". If you go through your paperwork, if you've been approved for your
visa and you haven't received your green card, you'll probably want to go through your documents
and see if the immigration officer gave you a number that starts with "IOE".
If you have that, you can use the USCIS case status tool to check the status of your
case using that number, more specifically you'll be able to check the status of your green card.
The other thing you want to make sure that you do to be able to receive your green card is that
you'll pay that visa fee. That fee should be paid before you enter the United States.
If you do that, when you get online and check the USCIS case status, you'll see a notice like
this, it'll say "You should receive your resident card within 90 days of entry to the United States
or within 90 days after your USCIS immigration fee payment is received." If you don't pay that fee then
you won't receive your green card. But usually, this is the status that you will see
and it will also tell you if you paid your fee. It'll say you've paid your fee and it'll tell
you the date that you paid your fee. It used to be 90 days and then COVID happened to the world
and then just general immigration delays. What you can do is if it's been more than 90 days,
you can call the USCIS contact center to get more information and you will need that receipt number
for them to look up the status of your green card. Typically though if it's been 90 days or just a
little bit more, the customer service officers, when you call that number will usually let you know
actually because of COVID, because of delays it is taking up to 120 days, sometimes more.
We are seeing that immigration is very random. It's hard to compare your case to someone else's
just because someone else received their card in a month or six months, doesn't
mean that will hold true for you. We're seeing individuals receiving their green cards
sometimes within a month, pretty quickly, and then others are having to wait longer. Again, the
tools you can use would be checking that online case status with that receipt number to see the
green card. It will show you when they're actually delivering the card and they'll even give you the
USPS, United States Postal Service tracking so you can track your card or like I mentioned,
you can call USCIS and typically, they will tell you it's taking up to 120 days. What you can do
if it gets beyond that 120-day mark, they can put in an inquiry for you. It's considered
like an outside of normal processing inquiry to get a status of your card. Hopefully if you're
in this situation, I hope it doesn't take more than 120 days. I hope you don't have to use all of those
tools and I hope you receive your green card soon but hopefully, this provides you clarity on
what you can do or what's going on if you still haven't received a green card.