Some Fast I-485 Approvals
Posted Jul 08, 2005
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We at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy have noticed that some of the recently-filed I-485, Application for Adjustment of Status, cases have been processed to approval in record time. This is an apparent result of the backlog reduction goals by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). While these efforts have yielded generally quicker approvals overall, the extremely fast cases remain the exception and not the rule. Each of the Service Centers continues to exhibit a wide range of processing times just within itself.
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We are sharing our experiences at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy to provide MurthyDotCom and MurthyBulletin readers with insight. As we have often stated, processing times are not a science. They are quite erratic and often unpredictable. Obviously, due to EB3 retrogression, there will not be any I-485 approvals for EB3 cases during the month of July 2005 and until the priority dates become current. Anyone who is not familiar with this important immigration topic should review our June 17, 2005 MurthyBulletin article, EB3 Numbers Unavailable from July 1, 2005 Except Schedule A Workers, available on MurthyDotCom.
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Our Recent Experience
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To keep our MurthyBulletin and MurthyDotCom readers up to date with our observations at The Law Office of Sheela Murthy, we have compiled a sampling of some of our fastest and more recent I-485 cases. We remind readers that, while faster processing is generally a good thing, it does change strategies with respect to events such as scheduling marriage and job changes. We have covered these matters in other articles, including our Nov 19, 2004 MurthyBulletin article, Many I-485 Approvals, also available on MurthyDotCom.
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I-485 Approvals
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VSC : The fastest approval to date at the Vermont Service Center (VSC) took about three months. This case was filed under the EB2 National Interest Waiver provisions on March 14, 2005 and approved on June 23, 2005. On the same date, we received another approval for a case that had been filed about two months earlier, on January 25, 2005. Many cases that were filed in 2003 and 2004, or earlier, still remain pending at the VSC, however. The slowest case at this Service Center that we have seen since we started tracking these timings was approved in May 2005. It had been filed almost three years earlier, in 2002.
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TSC : The Texas Service Center (TSC) recently approved an I-485 in record time. We were amazed to receive an approval in June 2005, within less than one month! The case was filed in mid-May 2005 and approved in early June. However, in contrast to that was a case approved just a few days later that had been filed two years before, in June 2003.
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NSC : The Nebraska Service Center (NSC) continues essentially the same trend as the other Service Centers, but they are not quite as fast in approving I-485s. The fastest case we have seen recently was approved in eight months. That case was approved in mid-June 2005. Similar to the other Service Centers, we received another approval a few days later for a case that had taken almost exactly two years from filing to approval.
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CSC : The most recent approval that we received from the California Service Center (CSC) took about ten months. We have had a number of significantly faster approvals, but these were from a few months earlier. This slower recent processing may be due to the ending of the pilot project in which the CSC was trying to process concurrently-filed I-140 and I-485 cases within 90 days of receiving the I-140 and I-485.
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Conclusion
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The tendency toward faster processing continues; particularly for recently filed cases. Erratic processing times also continue. While EB3 cases are ineligible for approval from July 2005 and until the priority date becomes available for the particular case, the impact of this “freeze” upon processing times for non-EB3 cases remains unknown.