Incompetence by Interviewing Officer? Cross chargeability case


vishvard

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Hi All,

I completed my AOS interview at the Santa Ana location on Nov 28th. My file is under EB2 with a priority date of Feb 2013. However, since my wife is Belgium born we had applied under the cross charge ability rule. My 485 application was submitted in Feb 2018 and I had got my EAD and Advance Parole completed by April. We got scheduled for an interview in Santa Ana for Nov 28th 2018.

We completed the interview in about 20 mins. After the AOS interview the officer told us that she had approved our Application. She asked us to wait outside and after about 5 mins came back and told us that there was no visa number available. I tried explaining to her that we are cross charging it to worldwide and per the visa bulletins it should be all current. She said she needs to call the main office and speak to them since the system is not making a visa available. I don’t know if she fully understood what cross charge ability meant etc. Anyways, about 8 days later we got a mail saying our case is being transferred to NBC since there is no visa available at this time. My attorney sent a package to the Santa Ana field office explaining the cross charge ability rule and explaining our case again.

At the moment I am not sure what to expect next or how long to wait. I called the service center and they mentioned our case was transferred over to NBC as of Dec 13 2018. Does this mean I have to wait until my 2013 eb2 for India date becomes current? That will be kind of disappointing. What’s the general rule of thumb for something like this? Thanks!

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Attached the letter I received from USCIS post AOS interview. I am not sure why they would choose NBC since my underlying file is Employment based and obviously, I have no idea why they would say visa was retrogressed since all the bulletin boards show worldwide as being current.

The more I think about it, the more questions I have.

Anyways, hoping I can get some directions from the fine people reading this forum post.

Cheers!

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Yes, cross chargeablity is not a very common scenario, many don’t know the concept. I think they entered/ applied your county of birth in the system. You did all that you can. It’s bad luck. You can either wait for your visa number to be available as per your country of birth or see if they get back...can’t do much other than what you did and wait unfortunately...

 

 

 

 

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And yes, they aren't always the brightest. In my naturalization case, the officer knew less of the law than I did. She went to a supervisor, who didn't know about the specific issue in my case, either (about reference to a deity in the oath,) but came back later to say my demand was ok. They would have heard from my lawyer else...

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Yeah, I have a lawyer and he has sent them a note saying they have made an error. I will probably give it a month and see if I should take other actions. Of course, they make it hard for you to contact them and discuss your case.

What are my options here:

Wait and do nothing?

Legally, what can I do to get them to rectify their mistake? I have called the Service center and spoken to Tier 2 agent. They are pretty much useless. I can make an infopass appt, but Santa Ana does not do Infopass appts (per their website). I travel frequently for work, is it possible to do an infopass appt in a different location for my case? Would that be an issue?

Got to fight these guys, it's been a long and hard road already, don't want to give up at this point.

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On 1/6/2019 at 11:22 PM, vishvard said:

Yeah, I have a lawyer and he has sent them a note saying they have made an error. I will probably give it a month and see if I should take other actions. Of course, they make it hard for you to contact them and discuss your case.

What are my options here:

Wait and do nothing?

Legally, what can I do to get them to rectify their mistake? I have called the Service center and spoken to Tier 2 agent. They are pretty much useless. I can make an infopass appt, but Santa Ana does not do Infopass appts (per their website). I travel frequently for work, is it possible to do an infopass appt in a different location for my case? Would that be an issue?

Got to fight these guys, it's been a long and hard road already, don't want to give up at this point.

Legally, what can I do to get them to rectify their mistake? ---> Notify/Inform them either by yourself or through attorney, really doesn't matter as long as you have notified, which you did! Now you can just sit tight and wait for their response. I read a couple of cross-changeability cases that got rejected at the mail-room stage due to lack of awareness; so you are not alone, it typical to expect issues cos not everyone is aware of CC. You are lucky to get this far, but unlucky to not cross the line. 

I travel frequently for work, is it possible to do an infopass appt in a different location for my case? ---> No. Your case/file is assigned to a local office based on where you reside. Transferring your case to a different location for info-pass would only add further complications.  However, it looks like your file is no longer in local office and its sent back to NBC with instructions to re-assign to local office once PD is current and visa number available. Now it's up to NBC to keep track of your PD and reassign to the local office (LO) at the time. NBC goes by LO instructions. 

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