My I-526 petition was approved over 10 weeks ago, but the NVC has not received it yet. Three weeks ago I sent them a scanned copy of my Approval Notice and received a reply stating “The National Visa Center received your inquiry and the attached I-797 Notice of Action – Approval Notice. Unfortunately we do not have a record of receiving your approved petition from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). NVC will work with USCIS to determine the location of your petition. We will let you know when we have more information.” What does this mean?
Answers
Salvatore Picataggio
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryIt means that USCIS and the NVC are very slow! This has been the case for some time and does not seem to be improving. Be patient and continue to inquire every 30 days or so.
BoBi Ahn
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryWe are seeing around 3-4 months for NVC to receive EB-5 cases.
A Olusanjo Omoniyi
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryThe letter from the NVC is self-explanatory; it simply means that the NVC can neither do anything nor comment on your case until it receives your case file. Just make sure your file arrives at some point. Thus, while you may be concerned about the length of time this is taking, it is nothing unusual that transfer of case files between these two agencies takes some time. Just wait a little more.
Charles Foster
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryAssuming visa numbers are available and you have an approved visa petition, the National Visa Center should receive your approved EB-5 investor petition on Form I-526 within a reasonable period of time; normally within a two-month period. It can vary depending upon the USCIS workload and a variety of other factors. If you do not receive a response, you should follow up with the USCIS directly or through your attorney or perhaps through a Congressional inquiry.
Irina A. Rostova
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryLately we are seeing as much as a four-month time gap between the approval and when NVC receives the approval notice.
Bernard P Wolfsdorf
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryIt routinely takes 2-3 months, sadly. No need for panic, yet.
Jinhee Wilde
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryIt is taking more than two months to transfer the cases from USCIS to NVC these days and in some cases, much longer. Put in a request to USCIS also and keep asking.
Stephen Berman
Immigration Attorneys DirectoryIt should not take 10 weeks. Check the approval notice if it says that they forwarded it to the NVC.
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