I-130 for: Married Daughter (in Canada) ?

Question

Hello everyone and thank you for reading this. My father (US citizen living in Arizona) submitted an I-130 petition for me (married daughter with children living in Canada) on July 25, 2008 and received a reply on July 29, 2008 which contained a case number and said that the case was received and pending. This case it at the California Service Center and after checking my status on the USCIS website this is written:

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Number: wac**********

Application Type: I130, IMMIGRANT PETITION FOR RELATIVE, FIANCE(E), OR ORPHAN

Current Status: Case received and pending.

On July 29, 2008, we received this I130 IMMIGRANT PETITION FOR RELATIVE, FIANCE(E), OR ORPHAN, and mailed you a notice describing how we will process your case. Please follow any instructions on this notice. We will notify you by mail when we make a decision or if we need something from you. If you move while this case is pending, call customer service. We process cases in the order we receive them. You can use our processing dates to estimate when yours will be done. This case is at our CALIFORNIA SERVICE CENTER location. Follow the link below to check processing dates. You can also receive automatic e-mail updates as we process your case. Just follow the link below to register.

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I then checked the processing dates (today) for the California Center and under processing time frame for I-130 for married daughter it says April 30, 2001. What does this mean, the cases from 2001 on still being processed? And how long do you think it will take for my case?

Answer 1

Very good. You're right. Cases with the priority date of April 30, 2001, are receiving their decisions now. You have a priority date of July 25, 2008. We can roughly calculate that it'll take just over 7 years to reach your priority date at the present pace.

Those with priority dates of June 8, 2000, are receiving their actual visas now. As you can see, it took them about 8 years to get the visas in their hands. The fact that the Service Center doesn't seem to be in a hurry to decide upon the I-130's doesn't slow down the issuance of the visas as you can see.

I think your case will take about 8 years judging from today's pace.

Answer 2

You need to check the monthly visa bulletin that the US State Department puts out...

You are Family 3rd Preference.  Right now applications with a priority date of June 8, 2000 are being issued visas.

http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bullet...

The April 30, 2001 date is the applications that are now being processed, but no visas are available as of yet.

Your priority date is July 29, 2008. You will have a wait of about 8 years and 1 month before the visa is available (August of 2016).  About a year before your visa is available (August 2015) they will start the processing of your application and you will get a letter from the US embassy in Ottawa or the closest US consulate.

Answer 3

You just got the Receipt Notice of your father's petition. This is not the Approval Notice yet. Since the Cali Center is processing the application that was received around April 30, 2001, you still have to wait for a while to get your approval notice.

Once you get the approval, you will be given Priority Date (PD). Then you check the PD current date on Visa Bulletin (VB). Since you are a Canadian Citizen, you just watch the date of Family 3rd Preference All Chargebility. According to the August VB, people who have PD on or before June 08, 2000 can apply I-485 actual green card application.

So you have about 7-8 years more or less of wait.

http://travel.state.gov/visa/frvi/bullet...