Valid Dates Error in H4 Approval notice


sid_red

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Since my H1B visa was expiring on September 10th, 2012, my company applied for a 3 year extension for my wife (H4) and me (H1B). The application was sent to the Vermont center on July 18th, 2012 and we got the receipt notice on July 19th, 2012.

On October 30th, 2012, both of us got our visa extensions approved. Today, I got the I-797 notice of approval documents in the mail from my lawyer. Everything looks good on my approval notice....they got my name, my employer's name, address and the dates of validity correct.

However, on my wife's H4 approval notice, they got the dates of validity wrong. Instead of giving the normal 3 year extension, they gave only a 1 month extension! So, that means instead of the validity being from 10/30/2012 to 09/10/2015, it says the validity is 9/11/2012 through 9/29/2012. I assume this is a typo.

I called my lawyer immediately and brought his attention to the error on the document. He said he will be getting in touch with USCIS tomorrow.

Has anyone else encountered a similar issue? If yes, what was the outcome?

My wife and I have already made plans to travel to India in January. We thought we can get our visas stamped while we are there. But, with this issue with the error on the document, we might have to postpone our travel plans too!

Any help is appreciated. I will update this post once I hear back from the lawyer tomorrow.

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Thanks for your post pontevecchio. Yes, the lawyer should be able to fix the error. He mentioned that this might simply be a typo as human error is unavoidable in the process.

I am more concerned about how long it will take USCIS to fix the error. Hope its done quickly and I do not have to alter our travel plans.

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  • 4 months later...

This message is an update to a topic I previously posted about. I thought I'd update the topic here rather than creating a new topic.

In my previous post (dated 8th November 2012), as I mentioned, USCIS got the validity dates on my wife's H4 visa wrong. I pointed this out to the lawyer who said that he will get in touch with USCIS and get it fixed.

USCIS responded on November 24th, 2012 saying that the validity dates (11/2012 through 9/29/2012) are correct since they give H4 visas for dependents only till their 21st birthday. Seeing this, my lawyer realized that USCIS mistakenly processed my wife's application thinking she is my daughter!! (Not sure how USCIS can make such a glaring error considering I am only 6-7 years older than my wife and certainly can't have a 21 year old daughter!)

My lawyer wrote back to USCIS explaining the error on their side. We received a standard response from USCIS on December 6th, 2012 saying that they have requested my wife's file and we should allow for a minimum of 60 days for a response.

,

Well...counting today, it has been 109 days and the issue still has not been resolved by USCIS. My lawyer has tried contacting USCIS customer service regarding the issue, but they told him that since the service request has already been filed, they cannot do anything further.

I know that the issue will be eventually resolved, but till it gets resolved my wife cannot travel overseas. Moreover, my wife's drivers license is set to expire in 1.5 months.

Has anyone on this forum come across a case like this? If yes, any idea how long it took to resolve it? Is there anything else that I can do or I can ask my lawyer to do to resolve this quickly?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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