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Hi everyone,
My wife is American (petitioner) and I am British (applicant). We've lived in France for 10 years and hope to emigrate to the US towards the end of 2017.
We filed form i-130 with all supporting documents back in Nov 2016. This is a consular process - my interview will be done here in Paris. We had to send everything to the Chicago Lockbox because - unlike say the UK or Italy - France doesn't have a local USCIS office. Within 2 weeks we received an email informing us of our LIN number and telling us our file had been forwarded to the USCIS Nebraska Center. It also said that we'd be receiving the Receipt Notice (Form I-797) by mail in the coming days.
By January we'd received nothing, so I checked our application status online only to read that "On Dec 14, 2016, the Post Office returned a notice we sent you for the Form I-130 because they could not deliver it. This could have a serious effect on your case."
So we called the USCIS helpline and were told that the USCIS cannot mail notices outside of the USA (say what?). We were told to go online and request for the form to be sent again, but to a USA mailing address. We did this, and 1 month later received an email telling us that the notice could not be sent because the US mailing address did not match the French address on the application form.
We called again and tried to get through to "tier 2" support to find out how we could get the I-797 sent to us, and if our application had somehow been delayed by the non-delivery (the ” This could have a serious effect on your case" thing). Every time we got transferred to Tier 2, a message told us that the waiting time was 120/160/240 minutes and to leave a number for a call back. But … they don't accept a non-US number for the callback! So, we called another 5 times, asking the Tier 1 operator to please connect us directly with someone who could help. Every time we ended up with the same US callback message.
So … I managed to set up a US number with Google Voice and have the calls rerouted to my PC here in France. Today we finally managed to get a callback from a supervisor. He told us that the Nebraska office is currently processing Aug 2016 applications, so it would be at least another 3 months before they got to ours. When I asked about us not receiving form I-797, he said that we needed a US address to receive USCIS notifications. My wife mentioned that her father lives in Florida, so the agent told us we could change the address of the petition to the Florida address. I asked him if that would not confuse things as we are still based here in Paris, and we still wanted to go through the overseas consular process. He seemed not to know and just reiterated that to get USCIS notifications we had to have a US address.
So … we went online and tried to change the I-130 petition address. And sure enough the online form is only for US to US address changes. There is no "country" field, just "state". It's for people who've moved within the US half way through a petition.
Has anyone here had experience with a i-130 petition when BOTH applicant and petitioner live outside the USA? It just seems crazy that USCIS will not mail notices overseas. We are after all following the correct process for I-130 applicants filing outside of the USA.
We could send in a physical "request for address change" form with the France -> Florida mod, but frankly I worry that this may somehow convert our consular process into an "adjustment of status" process.
Sorry for being so long-winded, but it's (already) been a long journey!
Any ideas/inputs welcomed!
Thanks
Stephen
My wife is American (petitioner) and I am British (applicant). We've lived in France for 10 years and hope to emigrate to the US towards the end of 2017.
We filed form i-130 with all supporting documents back in Nov 2016. This is a consular process - my interview will be done here in Paris. We had to send everything to the Chicago Lockbox because - unlike say the UK or Italy - France doesn't have a local USCIS office. Within 2 weeks we received an email informing us of our LIN number and telling us our file had been forwarded to the USCIS Nebraska Center. It also said that we'd be receiving the Receipt Notice (Form I-797) by mail in the coming days.
By January we'd received nothing, so I checked our application status online only to read that "On Dec 14, 2016, the Post Office returned a notice we sent you for the Form I-130 because they could not deliver it. This could have a serious effect on your case."
So we called the USCIS helpline and were told that the USCIS cannot mail notices outside of the USA (say what?). We were told to go online and request for the form to be sent again, but to a USA mailing address. We did this, and 1 month later received an email telling us that the notice could not be sent because the US mailing address did not match the French address on the application form.
We called again and tried to get through to "tier 2" support to find out how we could get the I-797 sent to us, and if our application had somehow been delayed by the non-delivery (the ” This could have a serious effect on your case" thing). Every time we got transferred to Tier 2, a message told us that the waiting time was 120/160/240 minutes and to leave a number for a call back. But … they don't accept a non-US number for the callback! So, we called another 5 times, asking the Tier 1 operator to please connect us directly with someone who could help. Every time we ended up with the same US callback message.
So … I managed to set up a US number with Google Voice and have the calls rerouted to my PC here in France. Today we finally managed to get a callback from a supervisor. He told us that the Nebraska office is currently processing Aug 2016 applications, so it would be at least another 3 months before they got to ours. When I asked about us not receiving form I-797, he said that we needed a US address to receive USCIS notifications. My wife mentioned that her father lives in Florida, so the agent told us we could change the address of the petition to the Florida address. I asked him if that would not confuse things as we are still based here in Paris, and we still wanted to go through the overseas consular process. He seemed not to know and just reiterated that to get USCIS notifications we had to have a US address.
So … we went online and tried to change the I-130 petition address. And sure enough the online form is only for US to US address changes. There is no "country" field, just "state". It's for people who've moved within the US half way through a petition.
Has anyone here had experience with a i-130 petition when BOTH applicant and petitioner live outside the USA? It just seems crazy that USCIS will not mail notices overseas. We are after all following the correct process for I-130 applicants filing outside of the USA.
We could send in a physical "request for address change" form with the France -> Florida mod, but frankly I worry that this may somehow convert our consular process into an "adjustment of status" process.
Sorry for being so long-winded, but it's (already) been a long journey!
Any ideas/inputs welcomed!
Thanks
Stephen
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