J1 No-objection waiver (India) recent timelines, 2015

[NoobEb1A]

I posted this in trackit! and posting here again so others may find it useful.

Article hastily written. May have typological and grammatical errors.

First a few myths to burst:

 

1. Myth: reading online you may get the impression that if you are on a US government funded project then you cannot get the J1 No objection waiver. That is not correct. I am on a federally funded project and my J1 sponsors hire a lot of foreign nationals on federally funded projects and they all get the No objection waiver without any issues (i.e. if they file for the waiver). The only additional step is that during the process of reviewing DOS may ask for what is called “sponsor views” – that is an explanation of the funding sources from your sponsor. That adds a few weeks to the process. They did not ask in my case because when my J1 DS-2019 was generated this rule had not been implemented for the government organization I was contracting for.

2. Myth: you cannot file for your Adjustment of Status (485) while you are on J1 visa. That is wrong too. You can file for your J1 waiver and AOS concurrently as long as you are filing for No-Objection category. Google Adjudicators Field manual Chapter 45.5 for more details. My fingerprinting, EAD and AP was getting processed while I had not received the waiver approval from USCIS (different office was handling the waiver). Note however, to my knowledge, No objection J1 waiver is the only category though that allows concurrent AOS filing.

3. Myth: the lengthiest process is getting the No-objection waiver from your respective home country. Well that depends. As you read on, you will see that for me it was the USCIS approval. The No-objection waiver would have also taken long but knowing people helped reduce the wait there. When I started looking online I had felt that once you have the waiver from your home country then it gets real easy. As I learnt the hard way you need a lot of patience even after that. For me, the most excruciating wait was the USCIS approval post DOS favorable recommendation. Most people report online that they got their waiver 1 to 2 weeks after favorable recommendation from DOS. But as you will see through my case that is not always the case – perhaps it depends on the adjudicating officer. After having not gotten my approval notice from USCIS after 2 weeks of receipt notice, I created a database for tracking USCIS receipt numbers for J1 waiver for 10 people before me and 10 people after me. I created this list by decrementing or incrementing my receipt number by until I had hit the number of people I wanted to track. All of them had the receipt notice for the same date. After having tracked these notices for 2 months what I found was: about 7 out of the 21 notices I tracked got approved around 30 days, 7 more around 37 days and then 4 more around 57 days (including mine). There were a few more notices that were yet to be approved when I prepared this document. It had been more than 60 days since receipt notice date for these cases.

Now that the myths have been cleared up let’s get to the timelines.

1st week of Aug, 2014 - Got documents downloaded  from Indian Embassy, Washington DC website, notarized from local BoA, got stamped from DC Embassy, shipped to India via USPS

 

4th week of Aug, 2014 - MHRD received documents as per online status, Father in law received documents for local passport office and WB state government

 

1st week of Sept, 2014 - Father in law went to state government HQ and local passport office to get No objection certificates with the reference of an IAS officer from work

 

At this point emailed local Indian Embassy to ask them if I could bring these two no objection certificates to get the waiver form the Embassy. They said they will need all three. I know they usually are fine with just two, but probably they did not accept at this point for me because I had only filed few weeks back or otherwise I did not have the MHRD waiver yet. (Some say the MHRD waiver is the most important one of the three – I can’t say).

 

2nd week of Sept, 2014 - Father contacted localite from Delhi for processing the MHRD waiver, obtained an emailed copy within a few days.

 

At this point I could have gone to Indian Embassy to get the consolidated NORI from embassy by using the soft copies of the No objection certificates from the MHRD, local passport office and WB state govt. but I waited several months as I was under the impression that my DS-2019 information would change. I was also caught up with by EB1A processing at this time. In hindsight not proceeding at this  time resulted in a lot of stress later on as USCIS waiver approval came more than 2 months after DOS favorable recommendation.

 

4th week of Sept, 2014 - Received MHRD waiver hard copy received by mail

 

2nd week of Jan, 2015 - Completed DS 3035, generated bar code, took the 3 waivers and went to DC Embassy, had to return as was not carrying 2 passport sized photographs (did not know it was required at this step - as webpage does not mention about this at this stage of waiver)

 

2nd week of Jan, 2015 - Went to DC Embassy again with photos, NORI sent to DOS, they handed me over a photocopy of the NORI

 

2nd week of Jan, 2015 - Realized DC Embassy had mistyped the NORI application number in 2nd page, had to go again to get it amended

 

2nd week of Jan, 2015 - Information mailed to DOS

 

4th week of Jan, 2015 - Saw DOS update online status, but no reference to No objection statement

 

4th week of Jan, 2015 - Emailed DOS saying NOS should have been received by now

 

1st week of Feb, 2015 - They update online status reflecting NOS received, also email me back saying the same

 

3rd week of Feb, 2015 - Emailed and asked for status update from DOS

 

4th week of Feb, 2015 - DOS updates favorable recommendation. I was anticipating receiving a “sponsor view” but was pleasantly surprised to have seen this.

 

1st week of Mar, 2015 - Having not received the hardcopy yet, email them for one

 

2nd week of Mar, 2015 - Received hard copy of favorable recommendation from DOS and receipt notice from USCIS with receipt date of 1st week of march, 2015

 

2nd week of Mar, 2015 – Received receipt notice from USCIS

 

3rd week of Mar, 2015 - Received soft copy of favorable recommendation from DOS

 

4th week of Mar, 2015 - At this point it had been almost 3 weeks since the receipt notice date from USCIS and I was starting to get nervous as I had not received approval yet, went ahead and filed 485 with approved EB1A

 

1st week of April, 2015 – Contacted local congresswoman’s office with expediting request. I had grounds for expediting that I am not sharing here as it’s too personal.

 

2nd week of April, 2015 – Took an infopass appointment for local USCIS office to expedite the process. Had called the USCIS phone to learn service request could not be put for this application as there was no processing time listed for this application in the Vermont office (which BTW was processing my waiver).

 

3rd week of April, 2015 – Congresswoman’s office contacted me requesting more information, turned in documents. They said  they will let me know when they heard back

 

4th week of April, 2015 – rescheduled info pass appointment for mid May, 2015 thinking “let me wait 60 days”. Meanwhile my 485 application was moving forward as well. Fingerprinting completed this week at one of the local USCIS offices.

 

1st week of May, 2015 - Received online notification from USCIS with approval of waiver

 

1st week of May, 2015 – Received letter from local congresswoman stating waiver approved and I should receive it in 4 to 7 days.

 

1st week of May, 2015 - Received hard copy from USCIS with approval of waiver

 

2nd week of May, 2015 – Plan to send waiver approval notice along with a copy of 485 receipt notice to USCIS for AOS application update

 

In hindsight if people ask me if contacting the local congress/senate office would help, I can’t say. As there were a few other cases approved on the same day as mine, and assuming the likelihood that we all independently requested the local congress/senate office's help is low, I will never know, if this route helped. 

[i612]

This is very helpful.

USCIS should improve their processing system.

Someone is approved in several day while as some other people are suffered from too slow process.

When I called USCIS, they keep saying you should wait until 6 months.

it is too much gap between several days and 6 months.

USCIS should not make other's life so difficult.

[blahblahblog]

Myth 2 isn't a myth. By law, you must have the waiver in hand by the time you're adjusting status. There isn't any other way of reading the law. The AFM does have that instruction about allowing AOS with pending no objection waiver, but the AFM isn't a legal precedent.

 

It is true that USCIS approves no objection cases with pending application. And for all simple cases, you should get the I-612 approval by the time you get an RFE for the waiver. But be aware that if the government decides to deny your I-485, you're out the fees and you'll have to re-apply. If you're not in hurry, it's probably better to have the I-612 in hand.

[NoobEb1A]

Hi Blahblahblog:  I have read about people being apprehensive for getting RFE based on pending USCIS approval from waivers, but do you actually know any such case? It might make sense for them to give an RFE if the DOS approval was still pending but I would think USCIS does not give RFE for documents that are pending from their side (even if its pending in a different USCIS office/center). I do agree however, if USCIS were to reject the No-objection waiver then one will loose out on the application and FP fee. But, then again with a DOS favorable recommendation that rarely the case. My sponsors had mentioned that they handle several J1 No objection waivers (all or almost all federally funded projects) per month and they have been doing this for decades, and they have never seen one USCIS rejection after DOS recommendation.

 

Also, there is no correlation between the level of complexity of a No objection waiver and the time USCIS takes for approval. It probably depends on the workload of the adjudicating officer.

[blahblahblog]

You're correct about that. I haven't heard any case in which they didn't approve someone with pending NOS case at USCIS. And in one case, the people were able to keep an AOS rolling while they were applying for the waiver by responding to RFEs with updates on the waiver process.

 

And I'm planning to submit my AOS with the DOS recommendation (or actually the USCIS receipt notice).